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

This is a 'I wish I had gotten a second opinion' story. I had a doctor in high school who was unconcerned when I suddenly developed vertical double vision (which was freaking out everyone in emergency, where I had gone initially) and lost 60lbs for no reason.

It was only a year or two later when I told him that my arm would fall asleep much faster than normal when I raised it to ask a question in class that he thought there might be something wrong with me.

MRI ordered. Brain tumour found.

Not a doctor, but I heard my son's doctor say this. I took him to the ER late one night because of coughing and a high fever. They took an X ray, gave him IBUPROFEN, and told us he was fine. Doctor showed me the X rays to prove it and gave me a dirty look when I asked what the dark spots were. I told her she was and idiot and took him to urgent care 4 hours later. The doctor that saw him immediately diagnosed him with pneumonia and confirmed with xrays. I flat out refused to pay for the ER visit and told them that if the persisted with collections I would push their incompetence. They never called me again.

Edit: This really blew up! I would like to thank all the fine medical professionals out there for explaining dark spots on X rays. These are the exact answers that I was expecting for my question to that doctor. The fact that I did not receive any explanation of any type and received backlash at the mere questioning of a diagnosis would indicate some type of insecurity or complex that makes that doctor put their time and feelings ahead of my child's health. The fact that all of you spent a few minutes explaining and typing this on reddit really makes that doctor look really bad considering she couldn't spend 30 seconds giving an explanation.

My Dad ( a pediatrician specializing in Neuro issues) was seeing one if his patients at the hospital got dragged into the NICU unexpectedly by a nurse who insisted a baby wasn't well. The attending doc insisted the kid was fine and just tired from a difficult vacuum assist delivery. My Dad could tell the baby wasn't okay and managed to talk the parents into a brain scan. The NICU doc insisted my dad was nuts to the parents. Dad was right and the kid had a brain bleed and was rushed to surgery. The baby would have died without the nurse bringing my dad in and the parents listening to him. As is, that extra time almost certainly cost brain function.

Dermatologist here. I have seen probably 5 instances of “My other doctor told me it was fine.” that were melanomas.

A lot of times people don’t want a full skin exams. There are lots of perfectly sane reasons for this, time, perceived cost, history of personal trauma. However, I routinely find cancers people don’t know they have. Keep this in mind if you see a dermatologist for acne and they recommend you get in a gown.

This guy was told he had pink eye.

He had metal shards in his eye from welding

I've had a couple of gems, but the one that really sticks out in my mind actually happened about a month or so ago.

A young mother brought in a 6 year old to emerg, she was super nice, and apologetic because she thought that she was wasting my time, because she said that her son had started to develop different spots all over his body and she has no idea why. My initial first thought was chicken pox, so I had some swords and shields up ready to go for the anti-vax debate, but she claimed that she had her son vaccinated at all stages up to that point, and upon closer inspection they were mass of clusters of warts.

Not uncommon, but because of how rapidly that they were growing, I ordered some blood work to make sure there wasn't an underlying cause as kids immune systems are pretty well equipped to handle that sort of thing. And I'm really glad that she brought him in, because he had a severely low white blood cell count which revealed a primary immune deficiency disease.

Can I go ahead and speak on behalf of my doctor? 19m at the time (33 now), I felt sick for about a week, flu-like symptoms, didn't want to eat, just felt bad all over. One day at work I feel a very uncomfortable cramp/tear in my abdomen, so I go to one of those 24 hour clinics. At this point I'm slumped over, can't stand up straight without insane amount of pain, just generally uncomfortable and hating life. After a few hours at this clinic, they say "You probably have kidney stones, go home, drink fluids, sleep it off". This seemed fine to me, I was ready to go home and listen to the doc, all was good. BUT my girlfriend at the time (didn't last much longer than that) wasn't a fan of this diagnosis and drove me to the E.R., against my wishes of course. After a few minutes at the E.R., they determine my appendix has ruptured and I'm going septic. Apparently I was pretty lucky to not have died, though I did pick up bacterial pneumonia while in the hospital, so the recovery kinda sucked. Now I just have a crazy 6-7 inch scar on my belly to remind me to not avoid hospitals when I'm sick.

Edits, more info, medical terms, etc etc.

I’m not a doctor but I originally went in to the doctors because I was really tired the doctor waved it off but my mom insisted I should get a CBC (complete blood count) they found that my platelets were extremely low which resulted in them running additional tests to find that I actually had acute lymphoblastic leukemia. No idea to this day why my mom made me go back to get a CBC but I’m great full

Edit: I get it it’s grateful

edit #2: a lot of people are saying that the doctor should have run a CBC to start with but in her defense I am a minor and it was a school day so i think that the doc thought that I was tired from sports or something normal and was trying to skip school

I can’t count how many “I was told it was a headache but I just wanted to come in and have it looked at in case it was something else”’s I’ve seen. Of course, those are the patients that are the nicest and are profusely apologizing for “wasting our time”, and of course, those are the patients that have a brain tumor show up on their CT scans...

Edit: Well this blew up. Big apologies to everyone but I’m not a doctor. I work in the hospital alongside other doctors and I get the chance to see everyone they see. Apologies if I misled. That was not my intention, and I will make sure to be clearer next time.

I got a moderate traumatic brain injury in October and the week after I got home from the hospital I wasn't acting like myself was refusing to eat and just didn't make much sense. My mom called the doctor a few times they said it was normal but to take me in if anything changed. She took me in on the Saturday a week later becaude I started slurring my speech and was unsteady on my feet. The injury cause my sodium levels to dropfrom 140(normal) to 119. This in turn caused stroke like symptoms which were in reality a series of small seizures