25 Doctors Reveal The Most Incorrect Self-Diagnoses Patients Have Come Up With

While having common sense and logical reasoning helps, it doesn’t guarantee you can accurately diagnose your own health symptoms. Despite this, many people turn to WebMD, though the results rarely surpass the average person’s knowledge. To explore just how off-base these self-diagnoses can be, one Redditor asked medical practitioners: “What was the MOST incorrect self-diagnosis you’ve encountered in your practice?” Doctors and nurses shared a mix of humorous, tragic, and insightful stories, some of which we’ve curated below.

#1

Image source: Jatz55, MikeShots/Envato (not the actual photo) A patient came in with what he thought was a rash and the flu. He ended up having necrotizing fasciitis and didn't survive. Edit: necrotizing fasciitis is pretty much flesh eating bacteria.

#2

Image source: popthatshirtoff, luismanuelm/Envato (not the actual photo) A girl I know works in ER and not too long ago a college age kid came in around midnight to get tested for herpes. They figured it must have been pretty bad for him to go into the ER, after further investigation the small red dot turned out to be an ingrown hair.

#3

Image source: auraseer, Media_photos/Envato (not the actual photo) I've had a patient claim that amputations run in his family. He said that was the only reason he needed both legs taken off above the knee. He was adamant that it was not actually due to his uncontrolled diabetes, his enormous and continual sugar intake, his refusal to use insulin, or his refusal of treatment for the giant infected wounds on both feet. Edit: If you are here to make a remark about how "no one runs in his family," please be aware that we are currently experiencing unusually high call volume, so please remain on the line and your comment will be read by the next available representative.

#4

Image source: Meeper_Beeper, evablanco/Envato (not the actual photo) Optometrist here. This happened while I was on rotations as a student. The practice was used to seeing patients from rural areas, educated up to highschool, usually some missing teeth. Anyway, this lady was convinced she had a bee in her eye, but it sounded more like "Derrs ahbeein merahh!" I had to leave the room to get the doctor so he could translate. She had floaters. edit: lots of questions about what floaters are: when the jelly in the back of your eye degenerates down to a liquid you see shadows of the chunks of jelly floating around in the back of your eye. Very common as you get older, even common in some younger people who've played rigorous sports (football, gymnastics, etc). Thanks for all the up-votes everyone! I'm a long-time lurker and this is only my second post =).

#5

Image source: anon, DC_Studio/Envato (not the actual photo) Self-diagnosis? I'm an orthopedic surgeon, so patients are really often unable to diagnose themselves because they don't have the power of MRI or scoping. The most incorrect self diagnosis I've encountered was a patient who believed they broke their hip after a fall when they actually had a 2 inch piece of skateboard lodged into their side they forgot about...yeah.

#6

Image source: anon, LightFieldStudios/Envato (not the actual photo) I'm not a doctor, but I am part of an entire family of hypochondriacs. The best I've heard was from my grandpa who was 110% sure he had ovarian cancer after watching The Doctors.

#7

Image source: anon, SpaceOak/Envato (not the actual photo) This happened in med school. I was taking the history of a guy in clinic and I asked about his past medical problems, including if he had had any heart attacks. He responded, "oh yeah, I've had about 20 of those." "...you've had 20 heart attacks??" "Yup" "Which doctor(s) did you see about them? Do you have a cardiologist?" "Nah, I never went to a doctor. My wife is a massage therapist, and whenever a heart attack hits, she starts to massage some pressure points and it stops." "......Uhhhhh, ok......What does it feel like when you have a heart attack?" "I don't ever remember them. My wife tells me that I fall onto the floor and my arms and legs start jerking. She says it takes about a minute of her massaging before it stops. I then get really confused and tired afterwards, and I can't remember much of anything that happens to me until I take a nice long nap." The dude was having seizures, and thought that they were heart attacks. They normally stop on their own after a few minutes (at the most), and his wife thought that her massages were curing him.

#8

Image source: anon, viktelminova/Envato (not the actual photo) Veterinarian here. Hope you won't find this out of place. I had a client come in several years ago with a dog suffering from flea allergy dermatitis. These dogs have an allergy to flea saliva that causes them to get insanely itchy - primarily around the rear end and base of the tail. This poor little guy had chewed his fur out to the point that his back half was just about completely naked. So there he sits scratching and biting at himself, covered in fleas, several of which I have combed off of him and showed his owner. "Good news," I say. "We can fix this." After explaining the diagnosis, his owner proceeded to tell me how foolish I was - the dog was not itchy because of fleas. He was chewing at himself as a psychological response to the disturbance caused by having his butt shaved by an unknown intruder who must have broken into the house while they were away. I had no response to that other than to agree, that, yes, that must have been very traumatic for him. Ultimately we agreed to treat for the fleas, just in case. Shockingly, the dog got better.

#9

Image source: stargazercmc, DC_Studio/Envato (not the actual photo) I was the patient. On the Thursday before Mother's Day in 2009, I was diagnosed with a kidney infection 22 weeks into my pregnancy. The symptoms got progressively worse, and on Mother's Day, google convinced me I had a kidney stone so we went to the ER. Nope. Just me going into labor four and a half months early. (Side note: had the kid the next day. He's six now. He spent 238 days in the NICU before coming home.).

#10

Image source: Hawkeye1867, astrakanimages/Envato (not the actual photo) I was an ER tech for a few years after college in a very ritzy suburb. We'd get a lot of self diagnosis, and just general hypochondriac's. One time a woman came in via ambulance yelling about how her hands were turning blue, and she was worried about her circulation. A nurse, took an alcohol wipe to her hands and her hands magically weren't blue anymore. Turns out she had bought new jeans and didnt wash them before wearing them. I've never seen someone so embarrassed, she practically ran out of the ER.

#11

Image source: DemonEyesKyo, New Africa/Freepik (not the actual photo) Lady came to the clinic with her 8 month old baby and she was pretty pretty freaked out. Her baby had diarrhea for the last few weeks and wasn't going away. She initially wasn't concerned but then her friend told her that diarrhea is the first sign of AIDS and now she was convinced her baby contracted AIDS. We quickly ruled that out through their med records and assured her that her baby didn't contract AIDS randomly. As we finished examining the baby it started to cry so we handed it to her mother. Lo and behold she pulls out a baby bottle to get the baby to stop crying....only this baby bottle is red and is filled with Kool-Aid. We had to explain to her that babies can't handle sugar at that age and that was the cause of the diarrhea. She refused to believe what we said. "I was raised on Kool-Aid and look at me I'm fine". Man the south side of Chicago is a completely different world. Edit: Another story from that clinic. A lady came in and after she got off the scale she asked what her weight was at. She ~10 pounds heavier than the previous visit and seemed upset. So I asked her what about her weight was bothering her. She said she was trying to lose weight but it didn't seem like her diet was working. I casually asked what her diet was thinking she was trying some of the new diets. Her answer was "Bacon". Her friend told her that if she added bacon to all her meals she'd lose weight so she had been eating Bacon 4-5x/day for the last month. She was shocked when she learned that she was doing the exact opposite of what she was supposed to do. Edit 2: The reason these 2 cases come to mind is because I was shocked by the lack of common knowledge. These people aren't dumb they just didn't know what they were doing was wrong. It's a symptom of poverty and a lack of education. Both patients took the proper step's to correcting their misunderstandings and were admittedly embarrassed. As far as the race questions go. I now work in a rural, majority white, part of the midwestern U.S with similar levels of poverty/education as the South Side of Chicago and these patients have the same issues. They just don't know.

#12

Image source: JAYDOGG85, ORION_production/Freepik (not the actual photo) As a self-diagnosing patient...One day notice a white, hard, jagged object protruding from my back gum. Can't believe I'm having a tooth come in, especially since I'm 23 and had my wisdom teeth taken out years ago. Go to the dentist to get some X-rays annnnd it turns out to be a piece of a tortilla chip.

#13

Image source: dolphin_sammich, guyswhoshoot/Envato (not the actual photo) Just finished med school, so not too much experience, but had an elderly woman come in the ER with new onset seizure. The patient's daughter was convinced her mother had a brain tumor. On review of the medications, turns out the patient had been out of her Xanax prescription for 4 days, and had a withdrawal seizure.

#14

Image source: anon, shotprime/Envato (not the actual photo) I used to be a Nursing student, and we had this lovely lady in our ward who thought she had a kidney stone. She had an xray and the xray just caught a glimpse of her lung; turns out she had stage 3 lung cancer. She took it really well, her family were devastated. It was awful breaking the news to them.

#15

Image source: anon, beautifulmomentstudio23/Envato (not the actual photo) A lovely healthy 50-something lady patient presented with her best friend because she was unable to walk. It turns out she had been becoming weaker over the past couple of months and now had been bed-bound for two weeks. As she talked she waved her hand over her right breast and mentioned something about a problem there. I took a look. She had breast cancer that was so advanced that it was ulcerating through the skin in an area about the size of a small orange. I'll never forget seeing that. It's such a shame because she was such a lovely lady. We talked for about half an hour and during that I found that she had put it down to a lot of stress overwhelming her life lately to do with her son leaving home and a few other things. She seemed like a spiritual lady, and she was so sensitive and overwhelmed at the time that I had to take things very slow with her. During that 30 minutes I really felt that I connected with her and slowly helped her understand what was actually going on and that the next few weeks would be tough with treatments etc. This was about a month after I had started as a junior doctor. The next day I got a complaint to my supervisor by the head nurse for taking too long with a patient, plus a whole lot of other made up stuff about being unprofessional etc to make her claim sound better. Had to go to meetings with management etc. Anyway, the reason the patient couldn't walk was because of high calcium from metastases all through her bones. I treated that and she was able to walk again a few days later. I looked up her file about three months after and she was still alive, on hormone therapy to slow the cancer's progression.

#16

Image source: Fortyfore, EyeEm/Freepik (not the actual photo) My friend went to the ER after hours of complaining of feeling something like bugs crawling on his eye. He had rubbed it and flushed it with water and it was super red and swollen. He thought he was going crazy. The doctor ended up tweezing 6 bot fly larvae from his eyeball. Apparently there are 6000 cases a year or something in the US alone.

#17

Image source: whiskyvinyl, ASDFpik/Freepik (not the actual photo) Had a 19yo girl come in asking for antifungal medication because she was convinced she had oral thrush. Her and her boyfriend had Googled her symptoms, and at 19 you're never wrong. When I suggested that perhaps we check an EBV antibody to rule out mono, she looked at me like I was actively drooling on myself and refused, because there was, "No way I can have mono." Eventually I convinced her to have some diagnostic testing done, and sure enough she had mono. I tried to explain that having oral thrush as a 19 year old could possibly be much more concerning than mononucleosis, but she didn't seem to get it. EDIT: I will give the caveat that if a patient volunteers that they were looking up their symptoms online, I'll always ask them what they think they have and why. This can sometimes give insight to symptoms or concerns they may not have let on about that help me to make a correct diagnosis. Besides, taking an active role in your health is certainly not a bad thing. As long as you're not acting as if I'm some moron, I welcome that kind of discussion.

#18

Image source: Sarcastic_Pharm, gpointstudio/Envato (not the actual photo) Not a Dr, but a pharmacist so I hope I'm allowed to play. Patient had a cold, convinced it was "severe sinusitis" (a bit of a known hypochondriac). Saw Dr, got script for antibiotic. Was convinced she was allergic to every antibiotic tried until all that was left was antibiotics which aren't usually used in URTIs at a sub-therapeutic dose (because she's "very sensitive to medications"). The infection wasn't going away so she took antibiotics for longer and longer. She somehow got her hands on a blood glucose machine and must have had a reading that was slightly low one day because all of a sudden she started buying bags and bags of jelly beans because "the infection is making my blood sugar go dangerously low" (fasting ~4mmol/L, so normal). So she is taking more and more glucose (moved onto the straight glucose powder now) to control the "dumping syndrome" (I don't think she even read the Wiki on that one...) that the infection caused. Symptom of her "dumping syndrome": blood glucose dropping rapidly (because she is on a diet consisting of pretty much solely pure glucose) to "dangerous levels" (~4mmol/L). She is testing her blood glucose on average 20 times a day and taking about 250gm of pure glucose at least (from us) plus supplementing with lollies from the supermarket for some variety. We've consulted with the Dr. Nobody can convince her otherwise, we've all tried. She's put on ~15kg in the last month or so and will definitely end up with diabetes soon. Dr made a mistake the other day. In exasperation she said to her (in her 3rd appointment that month) "You should count yourself lucky, there are people far worse than you that can't even get out of bed". Nek minnit, she now gets deliveries because she is so sick she can't get out of bed... Tl;dr - Lady had a cold is now giving herself diabetes by living on pretty much just simple sugars.

#19

Image source: dagayute, Drazen Zigic/Freepik (not the actual photo) Patient is diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast, confirmed with biopsy. Surgery prepped for two weeks time. Patient goes to an outside facility, and does a mammogram. Radiologist read states it is benign. Patient writes an email to her primary doctor (my attending), "PRAYER WORKS. Please find attached report stating I no longer have breast cancer. Please tell Dr. X (Surgeon) that I will be no longer needing surgery." Cue furious emails to surgeon with sense of impending doom. TLDR: Mammograms don't pick up everything. Edit to add: Sorry there is no resolution at this time - this happened last week. The patient's surgeon is now in charge of "counseling" her to change her mind. Double Edit 2 weeks later: Patient has been convinced to get the surgery.

#20

Image source: yo_saff_bridge, Freepik (not the actual photo) Ooh, can I play? Only a vet, not an R.D. (real doctor) but... a young couple brought me their young ginger cat, requesting euthanasia because he had cancer. I asked why they thought so. They cited a) the tumours on the margins of his eyelids (which were actually normal pigmentation, or ginger cat "freckles") and b) that there were drops of blood when he jumped into the empty bathtub (which were actually re-hydrated flea dirt falling off the cat onto the wet tub). I talked them out of euthanizing their perfectly healthy cat.

#21

Image source: Tradyk, Freepik (not the actual photo) Not my story, but my brother in law's. He'd been putting on weight again for a while, and decided to get back into lifting. Gets severe abdominal pain, thinks he tore something. Eventually my sister convinces him to visit his go, who gets him an ultrasound. One look at the ultrasound, and they've got him booked for an MRI that day. Wait here. You shouldn't leave the building. Phones my sister, mostly care free, who then stars freaking out, because she works as a receptionist in a medical clinic. She knows they don't actually fast track you through tests the same day for no reason. Turns out the reason he wasn't losing weight again was because of the mass roughly the size of an Aussie rules football on his stomach. Doc orders a biopsy, hopefully it's benign. Doc gets the results, consults cancer specialist, and schedules to take it out in two weeks time. After they get home, cancer doc called them back and says, let's move that up to tomorrow. Turns out it was a really fare form of cancer, that the specialist had to look up the literature on. Extremely fast growing, super rare cancer with a name I can't remember, because it's about twenty letters long. Eventually they remove a 3kg mass, along with part of his stomach. On chemo for a while, and six month check ups for the rest of his life, but otherwise good. Sunny side up, it's now real easy for him to lose weight.

#22

Image source: anon, bialasiewicz/Envato (not the actual photo) I was the person self diagnosing. I thought I had a really bad muscle spasm. I actually had cancer. Oopsie!!

#23

Image source: GuitarGodGavin, SergioPhotone/Envato (not the actual photo) I'm not a doctor.... So I was at a friends house spending the night. I had fallen asleep and forgot to take my contacts out. I wake up and my eyes were really hurting. I go to the bathroom to take out my contacts. I claw at my left eye and eventually manage to remove the lense. I do the same thing to my right eye, clawing at it trying to remove the lense. Eventually I realise there isn't even a contact lense in my eye, so I freak out thinking it had somehow slid up behind my eye. I claw at my eye even more, digging around for my contact lense. I still didn't find it. A few hours later my eye is driving me crazy and hurts like hell. So I get my parents to take me to a walk in clinic. They basically tell me I'm an idiot and that contact lenses can't go behind your eye, and apparently in my sleep I must have scratched it out of my eye. Also I scratched my eye up so bad it got infected and I went blind in that eye for about a week... Everything is fine now, but now I know not to sleep with contact lenses in. TLDR; fell asleep with contact lense in, scratched eye really bad, went blind for a week.

#24

Image source: coalminnow, nansanh/Envato (not the actual photo) Had a guy come in for migraines and confidently proclaimed that the severe head trauma he had suffered 1 month prior had nothing to do with it.

#25

Image source: pardonmypistola, gpointstudio/Freepik (not the actual photo) Veterinary Technician here. Twice I have had people worried that their dog's abdomen was "covered in ticks". Turns out both times to be the nipples. One of them stated someone told them to try to burn the "ticks" off. Another one asked why their male dog had nipples and why they had never seen them before. Another one was a guy that brought his 3 year old beautiful spaniel in because he saw "tapeworms all over his rear end". Dog comes in severely lethargic and with a diaper on (dog also had severe diarrhea). When I pulled back the diaper... maggots. Everywhere. He said he googled a picture of tapeworms and that's what it looked like. Uh, no. Dog apparently had a small wound near his rear that got infested with maggots and by putting the diaper on, it only exacerbated the problem. Dog ended up passing later that evening after spending hours removing the maggots, shaving hair, and administering every medication we could. We told the guy next time to not Google things and bring in his pets immediately if there is ever anything that seems off. I think he learned his lesson.