Are you ready to get scared?

And paranoid?

And freaked out?

If you are, then you’re in the right place!

Because we’re going to hear from folks on AskReddit about the most terrifying diseases that any of us could get…

Let’s dig in…

1. Never sleep again.

“Fatal insomnia.

You can either get the generic kind or the random kind. Either way you will never sleep again.”

2. Sounds awful.

“Resident doctor here, a terrifying type of illness I haven’t seen mentioned yet are head and neck cancers in general.

They tend to have high s**cide rates compared to other cancers due to the terrible quality of life they can have due to masses pushing into their airways or esophagus.

Had a patient not long ago with a kind of throat cancer caused by HPV which led his bottom teeth needing to be removed and not being able to eat solid food.”

3. Beyond brutal.

“My brother d**d of throat cancer at age 45. Six months from diagnosis to d**th. It was beyond brutal.

In the end I know he gave up mentally because his qualify of life was gone. Absolutely gone. It was terrifying to watch.”

4. So sad.

“I would say Alzheimer’s.

Imagine forgetting everything and everyone you loved. Imagine slowly forgetting how to do things, how to walk, eat, drink and talk.

Eventually you die because you forget how to breathe… To me that’s pretty horrifying, and think of the family members who see them going through that.”

5. Wow…

“I currently have two residents with Huntington’s disease.

One is much more progressed than the other and the worse part is most people aren’t aware they have it until their 30-50’s and it’s hereditary, by the time you know you may already have kids.

One of my residents has 4 brothers who also have the disease, the only one in the family spared from it was the sister who suffers from survivors guilt.”

6. Fairly common.

“For something that’s fairly common – Cirrhosis.

Your liver has failed, you’re waiting for a transplant if you’re even eligible for one.

You have to get your belly fluid drained every week.

If you stop taking your lactulose or having BMs, you will get confused.

You can get terrible, life threatening episodes of vomiting / pooping blood because of your varices.

Your liver failure can actually lead to kidney failure, shortening your lifespan even more.

You’re basically d**ng slowly and your family is being burdened with your illness.”

7. Like a horror movie.

“Raccoon roundworm.

You inhale a bit of dust from raccoon faeces and the eggs end up in your lungs. Human brains have some gene expression that cues the roundworm to head to the gut of carnivores and it gets confused.

It ends up burrowing through your brain until it finds your optic nerves and encysts. You get severe seizures and brain damage before it mellows out with permanent blindness. Absolutely lovely.”

8. Weird.

“Anton syndrome: maybe not the scariest but definitely still very strange and distressing.

Essentially you get bilateral visual cortex strokes (with some parietal cortex damage), so you’re completely blind. But you don’t know you’re blind. These people will swear on their mother’s grave that they can see, but then walk straight into a wall.

Imagine going the rest of your life genuinely believing you can see, despite constantly being told otherwise.”

9. Constant agony.

“Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva.

Your muscles and tendons slowly turn to bone rendering you immobile, in constant pain due to pinched nerves, and unable to speak or eat.

You basically just become a fully sentient statue that is in constant agony.”

10. Horrific.

“There is a nasty variety of MND /ALS that comes with primary progressive aphasia, it k**led my Dad.

Not only do you get your body slowly failing, you lose the ability to understand and use language. It’s horrific.”

11. Petrified.

“Despite the fact that we have a vaccine for it, I have been absolutely petrified of diphtheria since reading The Cruelest Miles.

Without treatment, the thought of slowly choking to d**th on mucus membranes covering your lymph nodes.. terrifying.”

12. From a biologist.

“Biologist here, I’m gonna go with prion diseases.

They can hang out in your body for decades before causing symptoms, have no known treatments, and are very difficult to destroy. I’m also personally uncomfortable with the idea of proteins in my body misfolding.

My nightmare scenario is a CWD becoming transmissible to humans.”