Never ignore what your body is trying to tell you…

That doesn’t mean you have to be paranoid about every little ache and pain you experience, but if something seems unusual, go get it checked out ASAP!

Hopefully, these stories from AskReddit users will make you stop ignoring things that probably need to be looked at by a doctor.

Let’s see what they had to say.

That’s scary.

“It took my lungs collapsing at 17 years old before doctors realized I wasn’t breathing in deeply enough to expand the bottom half of my lungs for basically my whole life.

They asked why I never complained about shortness of breath. I never knew breathing was supposed to be easier than what I was experiencing.”

Good thing you got tested.

“My family told me I would randomly “space out”, although I never remembered, all thought it was normal.

Turned out, I was having “absence seizures”. We only found that out at a routine doctor’s appointment, just conversing with the doc, when I guess I just came to and the doctor said she wanted to get a bunch of tests done.

Been an epileptic for almost 17 years now.”

Painful.

“General stomach pain that I dismissed as perhaps constipation, but which would – every few years or so – send me to emergency worrying that it was my appendix.

I was kicked out of emergency departments at different hospitals multiple times, because it was not.

I moved to a new city and was lucky enough to score a decent family doctor who took it seriously. She told me she was rather impressed with the amount of “referred pain” I was having and that I should go straight to emergency. I replied that there was not a hope in hell I would subject myself to that kind of humiliation again. No way.

She sent me for a CAT scan and lo and behold, it WAS my appendix. She referred me to a surgeon, and on the day of my surgery no one in the hospital seemed particularly interested in my condition, I think most of the medical staff thought I was having unnecessary surgery though, curiously, they were MUCH nicer to me afterward. I recall a lot of people standing over me in the recovery room.

The surgeon called me to come in for a meeting a couple of weeks later, and when I walked into his office he had an odd expression on his face.

He told me my appendix was many times the normal size, probably because it had been infected and healed over the years, building up scar tissue.

He asked me if I minded if he wrote it up in a medical paper or a textbook (I can’t remember exactly which – he taught at the university). I gather at the time “grumbling appendixes” were a bit of a unicorn and there had been much debate over whether they were real.

So I guess my appendix settled that argument in the medical community once and for all.”

Jeez…

“I’d have these really minor facial twitches, like a single small muscle in my upper lip or eyebrow.

Nothing even severe enough to be visible by others. However, they’d last for a few weeks straight, even while I was trying to sleep.

I didn’t think twice about it. They always went away on their own, after all!

After I suddenly went blind in my left eye and got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I connected the dots.”

A sign.

“Losing weight suddenly got a little easier, and I assumed it was due to my efforts.

Happy with my success, I buckled down harder (funny how it’s easy to keep “being good” when you’re actually seeing results). I lost more! It actually got to be almost easy. I thought I was doing such a great job!

Turns out it was cancer.

I guess I should have known something was up, but I honestly thought I was just doing a really great job with my diet and exercise. Had 4 surgeries and treatment and I’m doing well.

Now I’m on meds with all kinds of side effects, including weight gain. Yay. But I’m alive, and so much better off than many others. I’ve only gained a little bit back, despite working really hard not to.”

Anxious.

“As a kid I had anxiety and my heart would race. Fast. It felt like a hummingbird in my chest and would abruptly pause and resume a normal pace after a few minutes.

At age 23 I had a bad reaction to a tricyclic antidepressant called imipramine and was rushed to the hospital. They ran an EKG and that rapid heart rate was a congenital defect known as Wolfe Parkinson White syndrome.

Basically I had an accessory or 2nd electrical system in my heart that would cause a “short circuit” occasionally and my heart rate would skyrocket. It was cured via a procedure using radio waves to form scar tissue around the accessory node because the impulse could not conduct through the tissue.

No problems since.”

Hmmm…

“A random sharp pain above my right ear and my tongue curling slightly. I thought it was just old age.

Doc recognized it instantly as something wrong with my tongue.

The cancer has been cured for seven years.”

Close call.

“I thought I pulled a muscle playing with my dogs one day.

A week later, I finally go to the hospital because the pain is getting worse. Turns out I suffer from a genetic blood clotting condition and had a two foot clot in my leg and multiple pulmonary embolisms on my lungs.

Doctor was legit surprised I was alive.”

Glad they caught it.

“Bent over to pick something up and felt a twinge in my groin (I’m male). I thought perhaps it may be a hernia.

I wasn’t too concerned about it then things started to ache a bit. I went to the doctor only to find out I had testicular cancer.

Fortunately after we cut out lefty and got all the results back from pathology it was staged at 1A seminoma. Meaning the surgery alone was all the treatment I needed.”

Scary.

“I thought I was constipated for a few days. Hurt like hell.

Turned out to be diverticulitis and a perforated colon. My wife called the ER and they brought me in without triage and sent a chaplain.

I lost a foot of my large intestines and almost ****.”

Just a pimple?

“Had what I thought was a pimple on my armpit that I ignored. Wasn’t overly concerned, thought it was something that would just go away.

A few weeks later, I came down with what I thought was some sort of flu. The flu lasted longer than normal so I decided to go to the emergency room to get checked out.

Turned out that I had a large tumour in my chest caused by lymphoma and the ‘pimple’ on my armpit was actually a swollen lymph node.”

Took a while…

“You know how you get all congested after exercising, and wheeze for a bit before everything settles down again?

No?

Yeah, that’s because most people don’t have exercise induced asthma. I was in my 30s before I knew that was a problem and not normal.”

Just like Jerry Springer used to say…

Take care of yourselves…and each other.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.