Doctors And Patients Are Warning About These Seemingly Harmless Symptoms That Could Actually Be Your Body Screaming For Help
Recently, Reddit user BenneIdli asked, “Doctors and former patients, what is a mild symptom which you should get a second opinion on just to rule out a major health issue?”
People had A LOT to say. Here are some of the best and most interesting replies:
1. “Doctors told my mom that she ‘just had arthritis’ when she kept complaining of back pain. She had a large tumor on her spine and died less than two months after it was finally found.”
2. “If you’ve already been through menopause but your period ‘comes back’ even just once, INSIST on testing. Post-menopausal uterine bleeding is uterine cancer until proven otherwise.”
3. “Sudden weight loss.”
4. “Look out for sudden, unexplained breathlessness that takes a bit of time to recover from, then you’re back to normal. It’s a big sign for pulmonary blood clots.”
5. “A wart that keeps coming back after treatment. For my father, they eventually took a biopsy, and it went from ‘this is annoying’ to ‘he might die in three months.’ It was Merkel cell carcinoma. Luckily, it only took part of his limb instead of his whole life.”
6. “My OB/GYN once noted that my thyroid seemed a little big but shrugged it off once my blood tests came back normal. It was cancer, which I discovered later on. Thankfully, it was a slow growing and easily treatable type. But it’s a good argument for following up on anything that seems even slightly odd.”
7. “Itchy hands and feet. My mom had a tumor in her pancreas, and the itchiness led to further testing. I don’t think she would be here now if it wasn’t for her doctor taking it seriously. The itchy hands and feet was because of a build up of bilirubin in her bile ducts, which was caused by the tumor in her pancreas. They found the cancer early, and she had a full recovery.”
8. “I thought I had random heartburn that only showed up when I walked up stairs. No chest pain, just a tight belt feeling and a little jaw ache. I went to urgent care and was positive for troponins. It was a heart attack. If ‘indigestion’ shows up with exertion or comes with jaw or arm weirdness, get it checked quickly.”
9. “New, persistent night sweats. (A few days of night sweats might may be from an infection.)”
10. “Bleeding after sex. Pain during sex. Make sure you get regular Pap smear tests. Please.”
11. “Being more tired than usual. People tend to think they’re just getting older — maybe they’re overworked, stressed, etc. But it could be an easily fixed thing like a vitamin deficiency, or it could be something serious but treatable like hypothyroid, or any number of things that are urgent and need attention. Sleep apnea, heart disease, etc.”
12. “Night pain in your hips and back (or really any bone, but those are big ones). More specifically, pain that wakes you up at night — especially in kids.”
13. “Frequent pins and needles in your extremities. For me, it’s my hands and wrists, and it’s a symptom of a Vitamin B12 deficiency. Unfortunately, the deficiency has been present for several years. Other symptoms include fatigue and brain fog.”
14. “When a headache starts waking you up at night, get that checked.”
15. “Sharp pain in your sternum shortly after drinking even a small amount of alcohol. Mine was dismissed twice by my doctor as just a strain or injury. I finally got an ultrasound, which turned into a battery of more serious tests. It was an obscure but known symptom of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I was stage four by that point, but chemo did its thing, and here I am 16 years later.”
16. “Sudden loss of balance was my dad’s only symptom of a stroke. Luckily he recovered, but he needed a cardiac catheterization, and they discovered he had heart failure as well.”
H/T r/AskReddit
Some replies have been edited for length and clarity.
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