Doctors Share Their 30 Craziest 'Thank God They Came In For A Second Opinion’ Stories

Not a doc, but happened to my wife and I. She was 3 months pregnant and did ultrasound. All normal. Baby heart rate was 99, and healthy. However for some reason, the ultrasound tech forgot to measure something and doc ordered a second ultrasound. Second appt in about a month, as my wife wanted to delay as she hated having to drink so much and not pee so the ultrasound comes out clearer.

I couldn't be with her for second ultrasound as work got in the way. However she calls me tearfully saying that the doctor ordered she abort the fetus for her safety and her health and she insisted on calling me to let me know before she did the procedure. Apparently the baby heart rate hadn't changed since first ultrasound a month ago, and this was bad enough to put mom at risk in pregnancy.

I f*****g flew to the hospital. I can't remember how I got there but I crossed heavy traffic to the hospital in about 10 Min of what is normally a 20min trip. Parked on curb, jumped out and rushed to her room. Thankfully nothing happened to her yet.
And I just camped there insisting on another ultrasound.

I kept telling the doctor it was a copy paste error. You see, the heart rate from first ultrasound to second was exactly the same. I knew - just knew, that the tech copy pasted the first report and forgot to update that rate. I screamed bloody murder if anyone would touch my wife. Security was almost called until another doc came in and said just do another ultrasound to decide the issue.

The ordered a second ultrasound and heartrate was normal.

My son is now 10 and I remember that fear and rage everyday I look at him.

Eye Doctor here. I had a patient I saw several months before they came in for their visit but well less than a year, which often means something could be wrong. In this case, as it turns out, nothing was wrong with her by way of complaints, she just wanted to get updated before getting some new glasses. We decided to just run the regular gamut of tests anyway just because we might as well while she was there. She was a 50YO woman, fairly normal exam, perfect vision, retinas showed healthy, but something about her pupils really bothered me before I dilated. We chatted about it and I asked her if she banged her head or anything weird and she said no, but suddenly reveals this crazy history of an old Meningioma (a type of tumorous brain growth) she had removed a few years ago. She had decided to omit this from her history with us as she didn't feel it was important, but we went and put it into the charts anyway. Turns out she got a CT done two weeks prior to her exam with me which she says turns up completely normal. I tell her she should tell her doctor about this anyway just to cover our bases.

Fast Forward: Patient shows up in my office ecstatic to tell me that my examination revealed that her tumor had returned with an incredible vengeance. She had no idea, was totally asymptomatic and the CT she had prior to me showed what was very literally the size of a spec of dust which the radiologist dismissed as "artifact". On her return to her doctor, they decided to re-run the CT to cover THEIR Bases, and they found a QUARTER SIZED TUMOR. Within Two Weeks the tumor went from the size of a dust particle to a QUARTER. She was rushed into emergency surgery as the tumor was growing SUPER fast and was close to a blood vessel which could cause a massive stroke. She had it removed that day and returned to me after recovery to tell me of what got discovered as a result of my testing. She is now a long time regular patient I have been seeing for about 10 years.

Edit: For those asking about the pupils, they were asymmetric, and the larger one reacted less robustly compared to the fellow eye. This was a marked change from her previous examinations where no pupillary defects were noted.

ER nurse here. Had a lady in for simple pneumonia. Her 13 year old son was getting bored, so I showed him some equipment. I connected a simple heart monitor to him and discovered he was in a complete heart block. I printed a strip and showed it to the doc. Hmmm.... We suddenly and unexpectedly got a cardiac patient.

My son was about one month old and was s******g small amounts of blood. And getting worse

Pediatrician ignored us because new parents.

Second trip to pediatrician and I refused to leave. It said “something is wrong and we aren’t leaving”.

About that moment he s**t his diaper full of blood and the pediatrician freaked out and sent us straight to emergency.

The doctors there ordered several different bacterial tests.

Just before they sent the test upstairs, an OLD doctor came in. Asked us a few questions and told the tech to test for one more type of bacteria.

That was the one. C-diff. 25% fatality rate untreated. Worse in infants.

Thank you old man doctor.

I have a story of a friend who was severely mismanaged. I've probably posted it before, but I'm to lazy to look.

For 2 years, my friend had been going to her GP complaining about migraines, bouts of severe vomiting, and dizzy spells. Every time, he would order bloodwork, then tell her she was fine.

One morning, she woke up, and after a sexy morning with her husband, could barely stand. She was so dizzy and had such a bad migraine. She told her husband not to worry, sent him to work and had her neighbour driver her to the emergency room. She doesnt remember arriving.

When she got there, she started acting erratic. They had to sedate her, and sent her for a CT scan of her head. There, they noticed a huge mass in her brain. The hospital wasnt equipped to deal with that, so they sent her by ambulance to the nearest hospital that could, a 4 hour drive away.

This hospital immediately sent her for an MRI. It wasnt a mass. They could actually see the "mass" growing as they did the MRI. No, she was having a massive stroke.

She was immediately taken in for surgery. They put in a stent, and had to remove most of the left side of her brain as it was all dead. Afterwards, she was in a coma for nearly 72 hours. They were uncertain if she would wake up, and if she did, if she would ever recover.

Thankfully, she did. It took almost a year of physio, and speech therapy (among a few others), but she has made almost a complete recovery. They even had their first child 8 months ago.

Turns out, she had incredibly high cholesterol. With all the bloodwork that was done, her GP should have caught it. When she confronted him, he told her that her diagnosis was wrong. That she hadn't had a stroke and had made it up. She went after his license.

Not a doctor, and this isn't about a human. On New Year's Day, 2 years ago, our little hound dog would not get out of bed. Her back half was unresponsive, and she would yelp in pain if anyone touched her. We took her to the emergency vet, the only place open to get care on January 1.

We were there for 6 hours. The place was a mad house. Eventually, doc checks out our pupper. They take a bunch of x-rays, and the doctor tells us that there are no breaks, which means there are likely lesions on puppy's spinal cord, and our options are either very pricey surgery and a significant quality of life decrease, or put her down and save her the pain. They give us some pain meds for her, and we take her home to think about the options.

The next day, we get in to our regular vet's office. Dog is still limping and heavily favoring a leg. Regular doc inspects poochie and asks what other doc said. After hearing ER doc's prognosis, regular doc advises us never to go back, and informs us that our dog likely banged her knee really hard on the bricks of our porch and was just being a baby about it.

Two days later, doggo is 100% fine.

Wife went to ER for pain in her pelvic region. Ultrasound showed a mass, probably an ovarian cyst they said. It will pop in time. Leave it alone.

Went to th Dr about a week later, had a surgery to pull it out maybe a month later. Did a biopsy on the mass. It was ovarian CANCER. she is now cancer free but wtf.

This is my second story to post here but a great story no less. Mid 30's man walks into my office with what looks like a black eye and a broken blood vessel in the front of his left eye. He went to his primary and it was simply assumed that he got punched or hit or something, and he was dismissed. He was noted to have high blood pressure, but a script for medicine was written and a follow up in a few months. Gentleman comes in to see me to get another opinion on the matter and I look at him and immediately start the line of questions: How long has it been there, do you have a headache, and when you plug your ears with your fingers do you hear a "wooshing" sound? He had a cavernous sinus fistula (CCF). I sent him directly to the emergency room with his family of 4 in tow and he was in the OR within an hour of arriving. Saved his eye and possibly his life that day.

The best news: He was a kitchen guy at my local diner which I frequent and they still treat me like royalty there when I come to eat. They all remember the time I saved one of theirs.

I had a guy come in for a second opinion after the first place didn’t bother asking any medical history.

Of course I took his history and asked more questions as we went. I remember telling him something felt off and we needed to run a test. So I ordered a peripheral vision test.

When I got the test back I was shocked by the most classic tumor pattern I’d ever seen. Two weeks later he was in surgery to get it removed. A month after this guy was back In my clinic thanking me. Totally different guy. Personality was a complete 180, energetic and happy.

Edit: Here’s another one I thought of though a bit more sad. But also good at the same time. Here’s a cautionary tale why urgent cares should NEVER treat eye issues.

Lady was referred to me after 2 weeks of treated for a red painful eye. The PA and MDs that saw her tried allergy meds and anti biotic is thinking it was allergic or bacterial conjunctivitis, or hoping it was mild viral that would resolve on its own.

So I took one look at her and knew it was a herpes simplex infection in her cornea. She was in pain and had been mistreated for 2 weeks. Got her on anti virals, but after discussing how it was odd she didn’t have any active herpetic sores, but had a really bad cough that the ER said was just pneumonia and would go away with antibiotics.

I told her to get it checked with a pulmonologist because it didn’t sound like pneumonia and it wasn’t getting better. I saw her 3 months later to monitor her corneal appearance and she came in using a wheelchair.

Turns out the pulmonologist was blown away that the ER had dismissed her. She had a really rare small cell lung cancer. The reason the herpes infection manifested in the first place was her immune system was compromised. She told me the pulmonologist said I’d saved her life because they caught it early. It’s been a bit over a year. She’s still undergoing treatment but her spirits are strong and she’s optimistic as is the pulmonologist.

I was like 10 and my parents took me to the doctor cus i thought i broke my leg skateboarding. He said it was a 3rd degree sprain told me itd be fine. I pointed out lines in the xray and he said they were nothing. I somehow convinced my mom to take me somewhere else and they confirmed i had multiple hairline fractures in my growth plate.

I'm an Emergency Medicine Doc in the midwest USA

The patient was transferred from rural nowhere to our tertiary care facility (big hospital with every specialist). Call was of really bad quality, but the transferring physician described a 21 year old male that had rapid heart rate and breathing rate, low blood pressure, low oxygen, confusion, and a severe opacification on his chest x-ray on the right side. Diagnosed pneumonia. He gave him a ton of fluids, started antibiotics, put him on a ventilator, but he wasn't getting better, and wanted to send him to us. Sure, send away.

An hour later the gentleman arrives, and looks young, fit, and not the type to just drop dead from pneumonia. We roll him onto our stretcher and find... A huge stab wound in his back.

The X-ray finding was his entire right chest full of blood. We put a tube in it, gave him back some blood, and he had to go for surgery to fix the bleeding.

Lesson: Look at your patient.

Had a patient come in for therapy after his PCM yelled at him for being a hypochondriac and saying his symptoms were all in his head and that he was just trying to fish for disability. His symptoms were pretty obviously neurological so I referred him for an MRI (to my shock he had only ever had x-rays). Sadly, I had to tell the 19 year old man that he had Multiple Sclerosis. With great satisfaction I got to tell that PCM he dun goofed and that I would be talking to our mutual Chief of Clinical services about the incident.

Bit of a weird one, because the request for a second opinion came from an intensivist and I was a contributor to their treatment plan.

I work in poisons control. Had a call from a green, but very astute young doctor with a middle-aged female patient presenting with a vague 36-48hr history of malaise, confusion, hypoxia from hyperventilation, and hallucinations. On workup was noted to have pulmonary edema (lung fluid buildup), metabolic acidosis, acute kidney injury, sinus tachy and raised CRP & WCC, suggestive of infection but no temperature. The initial diagnosis was sepsis.

This keen-eyed doctor, pretty fresh out of med school, decided to do a salicylate level on this lady because the hyperventilation paired with metabolic acidosis and AKI was enough to prompt her suspicions of aspirin poisoning, even though they could just as easily be explained by sepsis as well.

The level came back high. Not huge, but high, which prompted her to phone me for a second opinion on how relevant the finding was in terms of the patient's clinical picture. Simultaneously, the patient's family investigated the property and located numerous aspirin blister packs suggesting she had been dosing herself for chronic pain, which was present in the medical history.

Chronic salicylate poisoning is insidious and has been referred to as a "pseudosepsis" in the medical literature as it often causes similar features. Comparing a high level in chronic poisoning to the same level in acute poisoning, features are much more severe in chronic poisoning (i.e. pulmonary edema, hypoxia, AKI etc) - there is a disparity. We recommended certain treatments (all hail sodium bicarbonate) and the patient made a full recovery after a 2 week hospital stay.

Whilst there was no question an infective cause was present and contributory, I was impressed with the green doctor's intuition and willingness to consider other causes - I feel like it greatly improved the patient's treatment.

Edit: Some words.

In 2002 I started vomiting everything I ingested. About that time my hands and feet became darker in color. I had no insurance, but my Mom paid for me to see my family doctor.

For two years he would give me nausea medicine and cautioned me to stay out of the sun. The darkened color of my feet and hands travelled toward my torso and I began to lose weight at an alarming rate.

On January 3, 2004 my friends picked me off my bathroom floor and took me to a the emergency room. I was 5’6” and weighed 100 pounds. I was severely anemic and suffering from malnutrition. The hospital admitted me and the next day a gastroenterologist visited me. After talking about all my stomach issues, I asked him why I was so dark. I showed him a picture taken several years before where my skin was Irish pale. He went home that night and did research.

The next morning he ordered blood work and told me I have Addison’s disease. AD is an adrenal insufficiency, if it is not treated, AD is fatal.

The doctor also told me I was within hours of dying. My friends saved my life that day.

Now, 16 years later I am getting along pretty well. I take steroids and a lot of other medications. My skin stopped bouncing back to its original color so I look extremely tanned.

I am so thankful for that doctor who diagnosed a disease that nearly killed me. It will one day, but not today.

My grandmother had her hip replaced, but the hip always hurt to her. She waited a year, hoping it would go away but it never did, she asked multiple doctors and did multiple x-rays but doctors said the replaced hip was fine. We finally made her go to a private clinic in my hometown, and the doctor saw that the replaced hip was fine and dandy, but the bone around it looked like it was a tad bit eaten by bacteria.

So the new doc did an operation, and there was so much pus in the leg it was insane. If my grandmother waited any longer, her blood would become infected and she would have died.

Thank goodness she went to the clinic.

I am a (semi) retired physician and I don’t believe in second opinions. I much prefer two first opinions.

Former ER volunteer here.

An elderly gentleman was brought in by his concerned adult children for chest pain. He wanted to believe his primary doctor that it was just some gas or heart burn, but his son "just had a gut feeling" and made him go to the ER with everyone so he could get checked out. Heart attack was imminent, like, we weren't sure if treatment would take effect in time to prevent it. Declared code blue, all hands on deck, place went from a quiet, empty ER to sheer chaos in a few minutes.

There is no doubt in my mind that that "gut feeling" saved his life.

A bulk of my career lately seems to be maligned patients with legitimate medical issues who've been labeled as hypochondriacs and sent through for a psych work up and meds / counseling.

People with histories of all kinds of endocrine issues, like thyroid cancer / thyroidectomy patients who see someone once every two years about their thyroid and never have labs checked or med dosages fixed. Or diabetics with poorly controlled sugars, people who've had bowels surgeries and take time release meds, and then wonder why they aren't working.

The piece meal system of health care in the US is really doing such a disservice to actual humans. So many specialists and no one piecing together the big picture.

I'm not a doctor, but I'm glad my parents took me in for a second opinion when I was complaining about a bad headache when I was 15 years old.
I left school one day and went to the hospital for a bad headache. The doctor said it's "just a virus" and that I should just rest and take meds. I went home, laid down and took some Advil and carried on with my night.
Around 1am, I was screaming on the floor.
My parents took me to a different hospital and they ran tests and eventually did a spinal tap and discovered a ton of white blood cells. Turns out I had bacterial meningitis.

This actually happened a few weeks ago.

My sister went to urgent care because she had a bad cough and was having trouble breathing - they said it was a virus and gave her antibiotics

My mom took her to her primary dr who confirmed it. 10 days later she wasn’t better so my mom took her back and INSISTED she get an x Ray. The doctor said, “I don’t know why you brought her back in - it’s just a cough.”

Turns out entire right lung was collapsed, which showed on the x Ray. It had been for almost two weeks. The doctor called us and said “you need to go to the ER right now.” And then began an emergency surgery in the er, admittance to the hospital for a week, and another surgery two days later

Edit to add:

Checked with my mom, sister was prescribed the antibiotic Clarithromycin. And confirmed that they did say “virus” originally

It was a really horrible experience overall - from the urgent care to the primary doctor. At the ER (and then the hospital when she was admitted) it was a bit better. She had an emergency surgery in the Er where the doctor put a tube in her through her back to inflate the lung and another to remove excess liquid from her lung. So for the rest of her time there she had the tube connected from her back to a big plastic clear briefcase looking thing that filtered blood and liquid out of her lung.

Her second surgery was bc her lung wouldn’t inflate back up bc - surprise! - she had a big leak in her lung they needed to repair

She was kind of hilarious bc while on morphine she kept dropping f bombs (“where is the f*****g nurse with my food”) but she doesn’t remember anything from the hospital anymore

She has Down syndrome and the cause of the collapsed lung was actually because at the special olympics her team of petite women played against 6’0”+ tall men w tattoos. (Don’t even get me started on how stupid the special olympics can be, with literal “ringers” used to win gold in the lowest division.) A man chest bumped her and fell on top of her and we think that’s what caused it. She’s predisposed to these kinds of things bc of her Down syndrome - and had open heart surgery at 2 for a hole in her heart

Anyway, she’s a champ. Heading back to work today unhappily, but excited because she’s been cleared to go to a special needs prom next Friday ✨✨✨