Flu Or Fatal: People Are Sharing Their Wildest Misdiagnosis Stories

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.

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!

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


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.

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."

"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!

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

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.

“You’re a d**g seeker”

Nah, just ovarian torsion 🤷🏻‍♀️.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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. 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.

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

I saw my doctor when I was 25 years old because my toes were numb.

Diagnosis: poorly fitting shoes.

Yeah, ok, I had super stinky feet so I always bought cheap shoes. Never heels. As I aged I sorted out the stinky feet (connected to psoriasis) and I started buying nice shoes but still, my toes never regained feeling. Ahh I guess I permanently damaged them.

Lost feeling my right hand a few years later. ER diagnosis was, and I quote what was said to me face after a physical exam and nothing else "well it's not a stroke *shrug* bodies are weird" I literally continued on with life with limited feeling/sensation in my toes and my dominant hand.

At 37, from my knees down would go numb when I was lying down to try to sleep. Weird. It got worse and spread up my legs so I went to my doc (different from years earlier).

Yeah, I had/have MS.

I guess no harm no foul for the original diagnoses since I'm not diabled, right?

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.

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.