“I Lost The Ability To Walk”: 40 Scary Times Doctors Got It Wrong

When something is wrong with our bodies we run to the doctor because they are the experts on the subject. Furthermore, more often than not we are only able to get the required medication to treat whatever afflicts our bodies with a doctor’s prescription. So even if we may have an inkling of what is happening with our internal system, we still need to get a doctor's opinion to receive appropriate medication because of the processes in place to keep both the patient and those who serve the patient safe from any foul play.  However, it’s wise to remember that doctors are only human too. Often with more reading on a subject one is considered to be more educated in a field, but even an expert’s opinion can be incorrect. Today we explore an eye-opening discussion that struck up on an r/AskReddit community when someone asked folks to talk about when they or someone they knew was seriously misdiagnosed by a doctor who completely misread the symptoms. Scroll below to read these almost horrifying experiences of a doctor’s mistake that became a patient’s worst nightmare. 

#1 My 17 year old son had bloody stools for a few weeks. The doctor ran some tests and told him he was fine, to go home and eat Raisin Bran.

Image source: garenisfeeding, Jonathan Borba Turns out he had cancer in his colon (lymphoma), and it was very aggressive. He had to have emergency surgery that night. After the biopsy, the hospital called and said Good news! It's benign! Three hours later, the doctor called and said Oops, sorry, actually it is cancer, and we have to do a colon resection, followed by a very aggressive chemotherapy regimen. Freakin' roller coaster. Edit to add: That was 15 years ago, and he's doing great! Complete remission :).

#2 I had the starting symptoms of tonsillitis. I knew it was this and I knew I was about to get so sick, I wouldn't be able to stay awake longer than 20 mins, let alone see the dr, so I went and asked for antibiotics. It's important to note that when I get tonsillitis, my entire body shuts down, all my glands come up, and I just sleep.

Image source: MissMurder8666, cottonbro studio So I go to the dr, and he does an examination. Says my throat is only a little red atm, and feels my abdomen and feels a lump and asks if it hurts when he pushes it. I say it hurts a little but more like it's sort of more uncomfortable. He sends me straight to the ER with a note. I'm in there for hours. My temp skyrockets to 42 degrees Celsius, I'm delirious, they are doing all these tests and I tell them it's tonsillitis. They don't believe me. They eventually think since the test came back inconclusive that I have appendicitis. The surgeon tells me he's the specialist, not me and this can't possibly be tonsillitis. They take my appendix. The surgeon then yells at me for having to come in at 9:30pm on a Tuesday night to take out a perfectly fine appendix. They then discover I do have tonsillitis TL;DR: my appendix was removed bc I had tonsillitis and no one listened to me.

#3 My best friend was misdiagnosed with IBS when she was 35. She had vague digestive symptoms that had started about a year before. She had a colonoscopy, an endoscopy, then another colonoscopy, all clear. Then she began to lose weight without trying, while her belly stayed bloated. She went to see an OBGYN, who said my friend was fine, just a little "fat" on her abdomen. The very next day her new GP sent her immediately to a gynocological oncologist. She had stage III ovarian cancer. It took about 18 months of GI complaints to get a correct diagnosis. By the grace of the gods and the flying spaghetti monster, she is a 20 + year cancer survivor. Turns out, she has Lynch Syndrome, a familial cancer disorder

Image source: weird_sister_cc

#4 Every single thing that I have ever complained to doctors about have been because I was fat or faking it.

Image source: Appropriate-Toe-1332

#5 Not me, but a friend of mine had a seizure at age 16 and had been taking keppra for like 15 years. She stopped seeing neuro since she hadn’t had a seizure in years; her PCP was prescribing the keppra."

Image source: Fickle_pickle_2241, cottonbro studio "She started having seizures again out of the blue with disorientation and speech so slurred her boss started accusing her of being high at work. She finally got in to see a neurologist, who did an EEG and said she was fine, but increased her meds just in case." "I urged her to get a 2nd opinion, as I was sure that sounded like a tumor with the sudden onset and breakthrough seizures with the increase in meds. Turns out, it was a tumor behind her ear." "Second neuro referred to a neurosurgeon and she had to have brain surgery. Since then, she’s had no seizures and hasn’t been on any seizure meds whatsoever.

#6 “You’re a d**g seeker”

Nah, just ovarian torsion ??‍♀️. Image source: thisisallme

#7 My left thumb was in constant pain, couldn't make a fist or grip a mug. Saw the nurse practitioner at our local place. She said it was just over-use, gave me a velcro wrist brace and told me to take ibruprofen.

A few months later, it got bad again, went to the urgent care at the same facility, saw another NP. She sent me for a hand XRay and said it was DeQuarvain's Tenosynovitis, basically inflammation of the tendons around the thumb joint, and told me to follow up with a hand specialist. She gave me a new wrist brace, with a thumb stabalizer, and that really seemed to help more. Hand specialist, a week or so later, tells me there is literally nothing wrong, nothing he can see on the XRay to indicate DeQuarvain's. At worst, he said I have "maybe a little arthritis." He told me the brace should help if I want to keep wearing it, just don't over use it, take inbrofen. I wore the brace pretty regular when it got bad, tried to be mindful of it to avoid flare-ups, but it just sucked all the time lol. Fast forward a year or more, I broke my left arm/wrist in 4 places, needed surgery to pin it all back together. The surgeon tells me, "I noticed from your XRay, it looks like you've got DeQuarvain's Tenosynovitis too. I can release that while I'm in there." He did and my thumb has been fine ever since. Not really a crazy story but so frustrating! Image source: AmIonFire

#8 I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, social phobia, borderline personality disorder, and OCD before finding out it's autism.

Image source: olioleander

#9 Not sure if this counts, but… No one caught the deep vein thrombosis in my right calf, despite a couple of Doppler scans, and having passed out at work. Doctor said it was cellulitis.

Image source: piemom9397, Towfiqu barbhuiya Doctor even admitted me to the hospital and put me on heavy duty antibiotics the next day. While in the hospital, started having chest pains and my heart pounded just walking to the bathroom. They hooked me up and monitors my heart; nothing wrong. Hospitalist releases me the next morning, even though I know something is wrong. Get home, and I have to rest going up the flight of stairs at my house. Two days later, at my younger son’s soccer game, I pass out twice. Rushed to the ER — turns out I had two huge blood clots on my lungs (pulmonary emboli). Put me on mega clot-busting d***s and I stayed in the hospital for seven days. I have a genetic mutation that predisposes me to blood clots, and I was on birth control pills - perfect storm. Needless to say, I’m off birth control and on blood thinners forever.

#10 I started gaining 20 pounds a month and multiple doctors told me I was eating too much. By the end I could barely walk to the kitchen to get food or even stand up. I was down to less than a thousand calories a day and still gaining weight. I was finally hospitalized and it was end stage liver disease.

Image source: blippityblue72, Andrea Piacquadio The first night I was in the hospital they stuck a huge needle in my abdomen and sucked out 10 liters of fluid. Over the next six months I lost 150 pounds of fluid 14 liters at a time once a week. I eventually had a liver transplant. I was not a drinker and there never was a diagnosis for why my liver failed.

#11 I was diagnosed with BPD and severe anxiety, along with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (basically seizures caused by anxiety and stress). I was having multiple seizures every day and had one so bad I wound up in the hospital after I couldn’t stop seizing for 15 minutes. The doctors thought I was faking everything because of the BPD diagnosis until they did an EEG.

Image source: threadbarefemur, RDNE Stock project Turns out I just have chronic high blood pressure, so high that it was giving me seizures. It’s been two years I’ve been on beta blockers and I haven’t had any attacks, and my BPD diagnosis was removed.

#12 Definitely not the craziest, but this happened to me. When I was 12, I would get horrible stomach aches every morning, and would spend a lot of time in between getting dropped off for school and first period hiding the bathroom or just sitting in a hallway waiting for it to subside.

Image source: z0mbie_boner, Polina Zimmerman I was late to class so often that it was seen as behavioral, and my adhd/depression meds, both of which I was already on, just got upped. Those are both legit diagnosis for me, so I guess no one thought to look into it further. Turns out I have celiac disease and my body was just fighting for its life daily after my morning toaster strudel.

#13 Back in 2008 my dad was just “not feeling right” and hadn’t been for a long time. After two weeks of tests they told us he had aggressive Lymphoma and needed chemo urgently…and he’d be lucky to have another year.

Image source: Lizzy_Tinker, Tima Miroshnichenko One of the doctors who had run some of these tests disagreed with his colleagues and refused to sign off on the chemo, this was on a Friday and they wanted my dad to start chemo the next Monday. Well the doctor who wouldn’t sign off was right, he ran some more tests and proved my Dad was just coeliac. 16 years later he’s still with us living his best gluten free life!

#14 Had a cough that was keeping my bunk mates up at night (military) and one of them demanded I go to sick call. I did and the LT said I would stop coughing when I wanted to and it was all in my head. I went back and told her what they said. She said to wait until after hours sick call (civilians) and go again. I did. It was pneumonia.

Image source: Ready_Set_Go_123, Gustavo Fring

#15 I went to a GI when I was having severe abdominal pain that made me feel like I was having a heart attack, couldn’t breathe, just absolutely miserable."

"He didn’t want to do an ultrasound because he thought it was acid reflux. Turns out I had a gallstones." "You have to advocate for yourself. Some doctors don’t listen. Image source: Just_Dont88

#16 For years, doctors and teachers told me I was subconsciously faking sick because of was afraid of school. I had an immunodeficiency.

Image source: TheSilviShow

#17 My sister is epileptic. Since her seizures also look like someone high on d***s our primary care doctor *and 7 separate neurologists* told my mom to send my sister to a d**g rehab to clean up, this is despite my mom videotaping the seizures. Neurologist #8 went “yep that’s a seizure let’s get you some meds” after 30 seconds of footage.

Image source: gothiclg, RDNE Stock project

#18 I stepped in a hole in my yard and felt a "pop" and sharp pain in my foot. It went away after about 20 minutes. 3 days later, the pain came back, and progressively got worse over the next week until I could barely stand to walk.

Image source: Sparky3200, Henrik Pfitzenmaier I went to see my doctor, he did the standard xrays and didn't see anything. Then he proceeded to tell me about a patient he'd seen 2 months earlier who had a similar pain in her foot. Upon examination, he determined that she had stepped on a sewing needle, punctured her foot, and developed an infection. Then he looked at me and said, "I'm pretty sure the same thing happened to you. You probably stepped on a needle and didn't know it. Here's a script for Keflex," and walked out. Before I go any further, let me make something clear. About 20 years prior to this, I had an anaphylactic reaction to Keflex and nearly died. It's in my chart in big bold red letters that I am not to be prescribed Keflex. So, I had to track him down, get him to change the script. Fast forward 2 weeks, after the round of antibiotics for this mysterious needle that attacks people's feet with no warning, I am in far worse pain than ever. I go back to see the doc, he says, "Well, the antibiotic just wasn't strong enough. Let me write you a script for Keflex,", and I just about lost my s**t with him. So, after a very terse conversation, I was off to the pharmacy for another 10 days of antibiotics. Fast forward another 2 weeks, pain is excruciating. Call the doc, he schedules me for an MRI to find the infection, as well as a bone scan to rule out a tumor (?). Bone scan comes back positive for a fractured bone in my foot. When compared to the first xray, it is obvious in both. So I went through 3 months of hell (first injury through recovery, boot, crutches, whole 9 yards) just because he had another patient at some point in his medical career who stepped on a needle and got an infection. The kicker is that if he had listened to what I told him during the first visit, that I had stepped in a hole and felt a pop and instant pain, this could have all been avoided.

#19 My GP said I was probably just tired and diagnosed me with fatigue, during the next two year I lost the ability to walk and started shaking before I got diagnosed with Parkinson's. He thought it impossible to be my age and get it so it never crossed his mind.

Image source: Mateba6, Klaus Nielsen Edit: I had symptoms at 29 but diagnosed with Parkinson's at 33.

#20 My 96-year-old father fell down outside the house and ended up going to rehab center for physical therapy. My brother came down to stay with my mom. My father was assigned a social worker. Social worker said they would not release my 96-year-old father to my 82-year-old mother. They needed 24x7 live-in care or a nursing home because he was too weak to live on his own.

Image source: plazman30, SHVETS production The social worker says that from what my brother decribed, she has SEVERE dementia. She needs a cognative test and may need to be institutionalized in a locked down facility so she doesn't try to escape. So, my brother schedules a cognative test with her doctor. And we're now assuming my parents will be separated, which will just lead to a massive cognative decline and depression for both of them. I'm thinking they'll be dead within 6 months of this happening. I drive up to relieve my brother and he heads home. We both have a long conversation about how we're about to ruin our parents' lives over the next 3 weeks. 3 weeks go by and we get to the point where they're discharging my dad, and the social worker asks my Mom "Can you help him get his shoes on and help him with his pants when he uses the bathroom if he asks?" She looks at the social worker and says, "I've been doing that for the last couple of years." And the social worker says "I have no concerns discharging him to her care." I'm sitting there going WTF?! I haven't slept in 3 weeks thinking I was kicking my parents out of their house and throwing them in a nursing home against their will and permanently separating them. My brother calls me up and starts flipping out about the social worker and how she gave both of us an ulcer for no good reason. And my mom passed her cognative test. Obviously, they can't continue to live long-term like this. And they know that. But now we have time to properly research solutions and go over it with them, rather than look for the first available situation. Now there's a home health aid coming in 2 days a week to check in on them. My dad is getting home physical therapy. They're together in their house, which is what they want. I am so f*****g mad at the social worker right now!

#21 Diagnosed with depression and anxiety for decades, and at one point, bipolar. Just another female 80s baby with adhd (diagnosed at 40?‍♀️).

Image source: Solid_Preparation_89

#22 My mom was misdiagnosed for 7 years with a chronic ear infection, 7 years, no tests on the fluid leaking out, 7 years, no ideas that maybe he was wrong, 7 years of him refusing to listen to my mom. It took a second opinion to find out it was a Cerebral spinal fluid leak behind her ear. She's lost all hearing on that side because it got so bad they had to use the bones in her ear to repair the leak

Image source: namloocn, Karolina Kaboompics Edit: don't worry I've put gravel in his gas tank once a year for the last 4 years. If he doesn't leave town this year I'm going to just burn the damn thing.

#23 When I was in the Marines & in combat training at Camp LeJeune in North Carolina, shortly after basic training, I started noticing a pain in one of my feet. I was in a class at the time and it progressively got worse as that class dragged on, and I mentioned it to a guy sitting next to me after he noticed me squirming around like I was uncomfortable. He happened to glance down and said, "Oh my god, dude...look at your foot." It was starting to swell so much that you could actually see it through the jungle boots I was wearing.

Image source: Pixelated_Penguin808, Pixabay I went to a Corpsman (medic) to get it checked out and it was so swollen by then that they had to cut the boot off, and I guess because my foot had swelled up so much the skin broke, but the wounds from where the skin broke looked like a snake bite. So the initial diagnosis made by the medic, was that I had been bitten by a venomous snake. This is like 45 minutes to an hour after I first noticed pain, so the whole time the humvee was taking me back to a hospital (we were out in the field at the time), which felt like an eternity even though it was racing at high speed on these dirt roads, I was thinking I was definitely going to die. Fortunately at the hospital it was diagnosed as cellulitis (a bacterial infection), which can be potentially serious too, but it felt like good news compared to a venomous snake bite. I probably got it from a blister from one of the many humps (forced marches) we were doing, later getting exposed to swamp water.

#24 When I was younger from 7-10 I would get constant head aches. Ranging from usually pretty mild to excruciating pain. I was taken to the doctor multiple times and was told it was due to hitting the ball with my head too many times as I played soccer for 4 different teams and would have a practice or game at least every day sometimes 3 times a day.

I remember one headache that felt like my brains was going to explode and my parents having trusted the doctors told me that I just had to suck it up. Around 5 years later I found out I had a kidney disease which caused me to have high blood pressure even if I ate what is normally recommended. And they explain that my headaches were caused to my untreated illness. That itself isn’t too scary, what’s scary is that about a year ago my brother who has the same disease goes to the hospital because of a headache which he described as “my brain is about to explode” and he was taken to the hospital where they found he had popped a blood vessel in his brain and needed immediate surgery or he would die. That could’ve been little 8 year old me. Image source: Former_Hippo6799

#25 My aunt was told she had dementia. Turns out she was on 4 different (prescribed by real doctors) opioids and just whacked out of her mind all day for years. Weened off opioids, no pain, no memory issues. It’s seriously f****d up.

Image source: filteredaccess, Kindel Media

#26 Was told I likely had leukemia by an OBGYN. In the gap between my hematology appointment, I went to an urgent care and had them redo my bloodwork. Turns out I was just dehydrated. 6 years later, still looking good.

Image source: RedHotCherryShrimp, Los Muertos Crew This was the same OBGYN that told me the cure to premature menopause was to get pregnant "as quickly as possible" instead of getting hormone therapy. I was 23 and (am still) a lesbian who isn't super interested in having biological children.

#27 All through high school and college, I had constant nose problems. They were diagnosed as sinus infections and allergies, so I was on every common allergy prescription out there. None of them ever seemed to make much of a difference, but that’s what the family doctor said.

I moved to a new city and went to a new doctor for something unrelated. I mentioned the long history of allergies and he asked if I’d ever had a CT scan. First time that had ever been suggested to me. I had it done and it showed that I had a severely deviated septum. One side of my nose had basically closed in on itself, creating a great environment for infections and making it harder to breathe. From the way it had healed, the doctor thought it was likely due to a broken nose when I was a kid. I’d never knowingly broken my nose, but I’d had a bike accident when I was eight where I went over the handlebars and somehow got a cut on my nose in the process. I never quite figured out exactly how it got there or what it impacted, but was the only thing I could remember that involved my nose. There was no pain afterward or change in the exterior at all. One quick laparoscopic surgery and a couple days with a very sensitive nose and it was like night and day. Over a decade of sinus pain, headaches, struggling to breathe during school runs and getting heckled about being out of shape or just trying to get out of it, and turns out I was working with half a functioning nose the entire time. Second opinions are your friend. Image source: Sporkicide

#28 Dr sat my mother and I in a room and told us that my adult mentally challenged brother "will not be leaving the hospital and we won't know what killed him until his brain is on the autopsy table" .

10 + years and he is still using said brain. I told Dr it was the new meds they were trying, he disagreed , I insisted they switch him back, they did, he got better. Image source: Curlytomato

#29 My husband was diagnosed with ‘substance abuse disorder’ when his spinal cord in his neck was literally crushed and he was nearly paralyzed. He wasn’t even prescribed narcotics. He just asked for an MRI. He went on to need an 8 hour neurosurgery.

Image source: ScaredVacation33

#30 Deployed on an aircraft carrier and a guy in my squadron said his arm was feeling weaker than the other so he went to medical and they said he just needed more electrolytes and gave him a gatoraid. The next day in port it had gotten so bad he went to the hospital in England and they told him he had had a stroke.

Image source: PooleBoy_Q

#31 Got bit by a tick the size of a pin head. Started blistering in a weird way. Pretty sure it was Lyme's.

Went to urgent care. "we'll do a test for Lyme's to calm you down, but it's shingles" (I was 31. Not impossible but highly unlikely) Lyme's test came back negative the same day the area around the bite mark started to form a bullseye. Drove myself to the smaller ER further away. Nurse walks in. Sees me. Sits down and goes "so we'll wait for the doctor for the official diagnosis. But you're going to be in for a world of sucky antibiotics" So yes it was Lyme's. I saw the tick and got it off me before it was able to spread over my entire body, allegedly. Remember folks! If you find a small tick on you, save it so they can test it for diseases! Image source: Ciniya

#32 Back in 1998 A doctor wanted to wait 6 months for a breast biopsies . I insisted on one. Guess what? Stage 1 breast cancer.

Image source: ikesbutt

#33 Apparently my asthma was anxiety despite having been diagnosed asthmatic as a child. I "outgrew it" when we moved and I was "just out of shape and needed to try harder".

Image source: 321lynkainion123, Annie Spratt Finally in my late 20s I told everyone (including the GP) to f**k off and saw an asthma specialist who humored me. She did an allergy skin test and a challenge to test for asthma. I'm allergic to 40-50 of the things they skin tested me for, 10+ of them really significantly and failed the breathing challenge. Anxiety. Yah- I was anxious I couldn't catch my breath and no one would believe me lol.

#34 Flu symptoms for months on end after being a very healthy, very active child until this point.

Image source: sylverkeller, Polina Tankilevitch Thank god the nurse at the urgent care took one look at me and said "hey, what if we did a blood sugar test on this anemic, fruit scented, child-corpse?" My flu was actually type one diabetes and I was going into keto acidosis and was so far along my blood content now contained acetate. My blood was literally nail polish remover. I went into a 4 day mini coma, had my first NDE, and then woke up to a whole new universe where pixi Stix and grape juice were illegal.

#35 My friend's doctor kept telling him his headaches were just stress. I said try my doc and get a second opinion. worst case your out $30 co-pay.... my doc sends him for MRI or whatever and it turns out my friend had survived a brain aneurysm. apparently it was close to the "surface" of the brain and those are more survivable than those deeper down.

Image source: monogreenforthewin, Anna Shvets

#36 My dear friend was told for months it was long Covid. It was cancer, she died 6 months later.

Image source: evmeowmeow, Alex Green

#37 Being told that I'm too young to have the health issues that I legitimately have is so infuriating! I am 39 (40 tomorrow, Woop Woop!) and I just recently got my 'official' diagnosis for the arthritis that I've had since my early teens."

Image source: LalaThum, Thirdman "I can't tell you how many doctors told me that I have all the symptoms of osteoarthritis, but that just couldn't be right because of my age. I finally got a referral to a rheumatologist who listened and now my insurance company is refusing to pay for the medication they prescribed." "Last person I spoke with said I might have to get a second opinion due to my age. I swear, the more health issues you have, the harder it is to be taken seriously by medical professionals." "The amount of times my very real symptoms to several different issues have been blamed on 'anxiety' should be illegal, I swear!

#38 Sent home 3 times after Xrays with a cracked C5 vertebrae. Treated like a d**g seeker. 3 months of excruciating pain before a neurosurgeon found it on an MRI. C4-C5 Fusion.

Image source: CLE-Mosh, Anna Shvets

#39 My, thankfully slow growing, brain cancer was 'pre-diabetes' and 'kid needs glasses'.

Image source: RickyTheRaccoon, cottonbro studio

#40 My GP missed that I had a collapsed left lung and 2.3 litres of bloody fluid in that side of my chect cavity. No no, no Xray required. Fortunately the shoulder specialist got one done a few days later, and a flagon of that goop was drained out of me during the day. A week or two away from a heart attack in my sleep so they say.

Image source: Interesting-Ball-502