40 Doctors Reveal The Most Dangerous Mistakes They’ve Ever Had To Fix

Not a coincidence that 80% of the “it’s all in your head, you’re fine” diagnoses in this thread were given to women.

My uncle in law went to multiple doctors about leg pain and trouble walking. He's a big guy and every doctor told him in more or less condescending ways that his issue was that he needed to lose weight. After a 5 years he finally got someone to MRI him and it turned out he had a (by then) grapefruit sized tumor in his leg. He unfortunately died about 6 months later because it metastasized.

Yeah, being over weight is unhealthy but seriously, darn all those doctors that wouldn't believe he was in pain and just saw a fat person.

Not me but my mom.

She was always exhausted, the type of exhaustion that she’d have a bath, be so tired from it, she’d sleep on the bath mat when she got out.

Went to her doctor told her, “oh, you’re just depressed, go get a hair cut!”

She did. Still exhausted. Went back to the doctor.

Continued to tell her she’s “just” depressed, get a hobby, it’s all in her head etc. Never sent her for blood work, never referred her to any specialist.

Months later she goes back. Her doctor is on vacation. Physician reliving her doctor takes one look at her eyes and says, “it’s your liver. Get these blood tests now”.

Abnormal blood work and a liver biopsy later, she was told she had autoimmune hepatitis and was 3 months from death.

After she improved with medications, she went back to the original doctor and said, “I didn’t need a haircut.”

27 years later she still suffers from lingering effects.

I had the opposite; I'm a midwife and gave a second opinion. The first was received from the woman's GP.

She came in to the ante natal clinic and said that she'd had a headache that she couldn't seem to shake. She'd called her GP the day before who had told her to take two Panadol and have a bath and that she'd be fine.

Whenever any pregnant woman complains of a headache, especially one that won't go away, it sends alarm bells ringing as it can be a symptom of pre-eclampsia. Sure enough, the woman also reported seeing blue spots, had a blood pressure of 220/180 and a a huge amount of protein in her urine.

I got her to lie on her side in the room I was seeing her in, and race to get a more senior midwife.

It wouldn't have been more than 60secs that the two of us returned to the room, just in time to see her start having an eclamptic seizure.

We called a Code Pink (obstetric emergency), which then escalated to a Code Green (alerting theatre that we were coming down **NOW** for an emergency caesarean) and the woman gave birth under general anaesthetic 20mins later.

I still start sweating when I imagine what could have happened if she hadn't come in to the clinic that day.

Well when I first started feeling sick the October of one year at college I had:

- A non-productive cough.
- Night sweats and trouble sleeping.
and
- I had lost some weight.

The school nurse gave me Claritin.

All of those symptoms got worse, plus I was incredibly fatigued, my lymph nodes swelled up, and I had pretty bad back aches.

My GP took a chest X-ray and prescribed antibiotics for pneumonia. At this point I had almost failed out of school because I was only managing an hour or two of sleep per night.

It took until Spring break for me to go see a pulmonary specialist. He could instantly tell that it wasn't pneumonia.

I had Stage 4b Hodgkin's Lymphoma. My first PET scan showed cancerous cells in lymph nodes in all 4 quadrants of my body. At this point I had lost about a third of my body weight. The cough, weight loss, and back pain were my swollen lymph nodes pressing on my lungs, stomach, and my back.

They gave me my first round of chemo and I genuinely felt incredible. I felt like such s**t that an IV mixture of (carefully measured) toxins was an improvement. I went home and ate a whole pizza.

Chemo got shittier but it worked, so I guess I can't complain too much.

Not a doctor but my sister was suffering from headaches and minor seizures for a while, went to an urgent care and that told us she had an anxiety disorder and just needed something to calm her down. we got a second opinion at the ER and turns out she had stage four brain cancer. i miss her everyday.

Nurse here. I cared for a woman who had been diagnosed with broken vertebrae. She was in a lot of pain, couldn’t get her pain under control, and her blood pressure was very low. She’d lose consciousness, and be very difficult to wake. I also couldn’t get her doctor to answer the phone (middle of the night). Something just felt off about the whole situation. He finally answered and demanded we Narcan her, insisting we’d overdosed her on narcotics (following his orders). I then had a hysterical woman in a lot of pain going in and out of consciousness. I finally walked down to the entrance of the hospital and grabbed the cardiologist who came in at 4:30am for rounds and said “This isn’t your patient but I think she’s going to die.” He came upstairs with me, looked at her and her chart, grabbed the bed and rolled her to ICU himself. I have no idea how the conversation went between the cardiologist and her doctor. She didn’t have a broken back, she had an aortic aneurysm, which caused the pain and the low pressure, and the loss of consciousness. She died the next day. Doctors, if the nurse says “something is *wrong*” you might want to lay your eyes on the patient rather than shouting orders through the phone.

Not a doctor, but my mom went into a walk in clinic and told the doc she had really bad headaches all the time. She was a stay at home mom to me (10) and my sister (6) so it was written off as stress and got a prescription for pain pills.

Two weeks later the headaches were migraines. Stronger prescription and try to reduce stress.

A few weeks go by and she can no longer get out of bed, throws everything up including the meds, is completely disoriented and barely alive. My dad was a truck driver so he was never home. I was taking care of me, my sister, and my mom all by myself. We go back to the doctor and this lady had the audacity to say this is the weirdest migraine case she’s ever seen. Tells her to take warm baths and just keep taking the meds when she throws them up.

Two months go by and my dad came home, saw the condition of my mother (who was so sick she would urinate herself), the house (which was being kept up by a 10 year old), and said he wanted a divorce.

That night we found out she had stage 4 lung and brain cancer with a tumor the size of an egg pressing on her brain as well as many others scattered throughout.

I still haven’t forgiven that doctor for not taking my mom seriously

Edit: I figured I’d answer the questions you’ve been having here because I’m on my phone and keep getting lost trying to reply :).

As far as my mom goes, she fought hard for two years eventually passing in November 2010. I was 13 and my sister was 9. My dad fell out of a tree about a month after her diagnosis and shattered his heel. He became disabled because of the surgeries it required and his back. He was a monster while I was home. All I remember from my younger years was walking on eggshells, constantly being accused of things I didn’t do, and being watched like a hawk 24/7. I suspect he is bipolar and has severe PTSD, but you know how older people feel about treating mental illnesses.

As for us, it sucked not having our mom growing up. She talked every day about how she couldn’t wait to beat cancer and leave my dad so we could all have the life we deserved. I think we turned out fairly well. I’m 23, have a family, moved far away from all of those memories, and have committed to breaking cycles and loving my children the way I wish I would have been loved.

I do wish I knew the drs name now. Even though I know that it wouldn’t bring back my mom, make her diagnosis better, or even prevented anything, I still want to ask her if she started believing her patients. I think being a stay at home mom, previously poverty, woman has a lot to deal with how things went down. I wish no harm on the doctor, but I haven’t forgiven her for not saying something about going to the ER.

Life is short. I learned that by watching my mom give up on every dream she had because she knew she’d die. Go do scary stuff because who knows what’ll happen tomorrow. :).

I’m a lawyer, but.... had a client given a devastating diagnosis of an extremely rare heart condition. Doctor told him he had six weeks to live. He contacted me to make his will and set his affairs in order.

Thankfully, he sought a second opinion with an extremely well-known cardiologist (I guess the cardiologist was intrigued due to the rare nature of this heart condition).

THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH HIM. HE WAS FINE. This poor guy, and his family, were tortured over this, so devastated and terrified, FOR NOTHING. He actually called me to tell me all of this, he seemed to be still in the joyous, “I’m not going to die” stage, but I imagine anger comes at some point, when you take stock of what you went through.

I don’t know how a doctor messes up that massively, or if somehow my client’s results were mixed up with someone else’s, and some poor person's number is almost up and they don’t even know it.

So my local gp diagnosed me with a kidney infection and a urinal tract infection. Told me all my other symptoms like the huge 9cm lump in my armpit were all part of a cold I'd had.

Skip to 3 months later and I'm at a drop in center due to not being able to move without pain he looks at the lump and gives me that look of " how the f**k has this not been diagnosed?" Anyway, it was late stage cancer by that point... I'm all good!

Not a doctor. My sister was about two weeks away from giving birth when she suddenly started feeling excruciating pain and vomiting. I called her midwife who refused to speak with me despite my sister clearly not capable of speaking as she sat on the floor next to the toilet, crying and puking. Finally she just took the phone and was told by her midwife that it was probably just a virus and to eat a popsicle

Eventually I was able to convince her to go to the ER. She was immediately rushed in the OR for an emergency c-section. Her placenta had abrupted and my niece was born not breathing, suffered several seizures and even died and then was resuscitated. She is now 15 and has cerebral palsy due to going so long without the oxygen she needed.

I am late, so this may not get seen, but it’s a good story.

(Not a doctor)

My grandmother fell from her horse one day. Not a terrible fall, but from the way she landed, she wanted to get checked out - she felt she’d really jolted her neck/spine, and was an older lady with fragile bones.

Her doctor looked things over, gave her one of those soft neck cushion things and sent her home.

A couple days later, she decided to get a second opinion. No real reason, she just hadn’t felt listened to by the first guy.

The second doctor basically took one look at her X-rays and freaked out. He told her they needed to get her immediately into a brace to immobilize her spine (I googled to try to figure out what it was - I think it is a halo brace, but in my memory it’s bigger and more metal than what I was seeing in the pictures).

Basically she’d broken her neck (the same injury that had paralyzed Christoper Reeve), but she wasn’t paralyzed because the vertebrae hadn’t dislocated. The second doctor anything that did dislocate it (another minor fall, twisting wrong in bed) would mean being permanently paralyzed from the neck down.

She wore her intense metal brace that kept her spine in place for a few months and was totally fine, she lived another 15 years after that. But I think about that story often - the second doctor saved her mobility and freedom.

I went to a walk-in clinic because I couldn't swallow anything.


The doctor pressed on my forehead and asked if it hurt. I guessed kind of? He told me I had a sinus infection and prescribed me antibiotics (that I couldn't swallow) and sent me on my way. Turns out I had had a stroke and ended up spending three weeks in the hospital.

I have one that happened to me. I did college gymnastics, my senior year I had an accident in practice landing in my neck. Went to the hospital got x-rays, was told I was perfectly fine. Walked around in pain for awhile, Weeks later went to another doc got a new set of images, my neck was broken in 3 places and had a dislocation, had a multi level fusion surgery days later. Found out my x days got swapped with someone else’s in the ER and I was originally diagnosed based on someone else’s images. This was found out when I went to get my records long after my surgery for insurance purposes and my files had someone else’s medical records and images in it. Because of the time I spent walking around with it I had to have a posterior surgery instead of anterior which is way more invasive and gives me major issues to this day.

I’m a surgeon.

Most patients come to me after having seen another physician who has diagnosed them with something and told the patient to see a surgeon.

I’ve been called to see more than one patient for appendicitis....*who has already had an appendectomy.*

I’ve also been called in multiple cases for patients who *very obviously* have previously undiscovered, very advanced cancer. It always too far advanced for me to be of help, so I have to wonder....am I being called so *I* can be the bad guy and explain everything? Yes. The answer is yes.

Not a doctor, it was MY doctor.

I was a child and had a lot trouble with abdominal pain. Mum kept taking me to the doctors and he kept minimising it, saying there was nothing wrong.


Went on for a long time until I was doubled over in pain outside school one day. Mum asked me if it was hurting and I told her it *always* hurt and I just told her when it was really bad. She took me straight to my doctors surgery and demanded it got looked into further, figuring a five year old child shouldn’t be living in constant pain.

A few scans later and I was immediately whisked into surgery. My mum still can’t think of me being wheeled into theatre when her and the doctors did not even actually know exactly what was wrong and what they were going to do. The plan was open me up, figure out the exact issue and go from there.

I had an extra growth on my kidney which was all infected, an extra ureter that was infected the whole way along.

The doctor who had continually fobbed my mum off as a panicking parent whose child has nothing wrong with them actually ended up making a house visit to apologise.

Not a doctor. My husband had a situation where he almosted died because of a misdiagnosis. To preface this at the time we were young in our mid 20s living in a college town. My husband had horrible pain (on floor on hands and knees horrible), we went to the ER and the doctor barely looked at him and just told him to stop drinking and he would be fine. We go home the pain is getting worse and now he is vomiting. As soon as the doctors off opens back home were we grew up we drove 1.5 hours to see our primary care. Within 15 minutes of walking into the GP office my husband was rushed to emergency surgery, his gallbladder had completely ruptured and he was going septic. It was a total mess and he almost died all because of a misdiagnosis.

Also not a doctor. I was diagnosed with MS, sought out a second opinion, and turns out it was an easily solvable vitamin deficiency. Pretty d**n different... $15K in medical bills later only go have all symptoms subside with some nutritional advice, and supplements. I'm still salty about it.

As a kid, I was diagnosed with asthma by a substitute doctor for my regular physician. Cue the nebulizer and inhaler and all that. The whole time I'm saying it feels like there is stuff in my lungs. A week or so goes by and nothing gets better so I see my regular doc and they do a chest x-ray. I had pneumonia the whole time.

Another one comes to mind is when, after a surgery, I vomited so hard that I had a psuedoanyuerism near my femoral artery and immediately knew something was wrong. Instant shock. My gf yells for the nurse, nurse says, "It's probably nothing". I say, "it's something...get a doctor". Surgeon comes in, immediately sees that I'm in trouble and starts putting pressure on my femoral. Memory is foggy due to bleeding out internally but I made it. Had I listened to that nurse, I would have died right there.

My Dad has a lesion on his leg that wasn’t healing. The Dermatologist prescribed different antibiotics (pills and ointment) but nothing was working. He did 2 skin graft that didn’t work. This went on for at least 2 years.

Then my Dad got a new Dermatologist from the same hospital. She realized that he never had a biopsy!!! It took her less than an hour to diagnose the skin cancer. The surgeon scooped all the cancer out (another skin graft) and that was it for a while. Since then he got a lot of other skin cancer lesions but now he knows what it is.