Recently, Reddit user u/Prudent_Tip4118 asked the good people of r/AskReddit, "What is the oddest thing you thought was ok/normal and ended up being a medical problem?" Here are some of the most-upvoted replies:
Psst — the people answering these questions are not medical professionals; we cannot verify their answers, and this list is absolutely not meant as a diagnostic tool. A symptom appearing on this list does not mean it is always a sign of the condition the person said they got diagnosed with, either. Please speak to your doctor if you're worried about your health.
1. "Until I was 16 I thought everyone got stomach cramps a few times a day. Turns out I'm lactose intolerant."
2. "I'd have these really minor facial twitches, like a single small muscle in my upper lip or eyebrow. Nothing even severe enough to be visible to others. However, they'd last for a few weeks straight, even while I was trying to sleep. I didn't think twice about it. They always went away on their own, after all! After I suddenly went blind in my left eye and got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I connected the dots."
3. "That pulled muscle was actually a collapsed lung. After days of hot baths, massages, trying to relax-nah, nothing helped. No wonder."
4. "I felt a random sharp pain above my right ear and noticed my tongue curling slightly. I thought it was just old age. Luckily, my doc recognised it instantly as something wrong with my tongue. The cancer has been cured for seven years."
5. "Not sleeping or eating for days but still feeling great and having more energy than your average athlete. Turns out I have bipolar!"
6. "My family told me I would randomly 'space out', although I never remembered. We all thought it was normal. Turned out I was having 'absence seizures'. We only found that out at a routine doctor’s appointment, just conversing with the doc, when I guess I just came to and the doctor said she wanted to get a bunch of tests done. Been an epileptic for almost 17 years now."
7. "As a kid I had anxiety and my heart would race. Fast. It felt like a hummingbird in my chest and would abruptly pause and resume a normal pace after a few minutes. At age 23 I had a bad reaction to a tricyclic antidepressant called imipramine and was rushed to the hospital. They ran an EKG and that rapid heart rate was a congenital defect known as Wolfe Parkinson White syndrome."
"Basically I had an accessory or second electrical system in my heart that would cause a 'short circuit' occasionally and my heart rate would skyrocket. It was cured by a procedure using radio waves to form scar tissue around the accessory node because the impulse could not conduct through the tissue.
No problems since."
8. "It took my lungs collapsing at 17 years old before doctors realised I wasn’t breathing in deeply enough to expand the bottom half of my lungs for basically my whole life. They asked why I never complained about shortness of breath. I never knew breathing was supposed to be easier than what I was experiencing."
9. "I thought I pulled a muscle playing with my dogs one day. One week later I finally go to the hospital because the pain is getting worse. It turns out I suffer from a genetic blood clotting condition and had a two-foot log clot in my leg and multiple pulmonary embolisms in my lungs. The doctor was legit surprised I was alive."
10. "I thought I was constipated for a few days. It hurt like hell. It turned out to be diverticulitis and a perforated colon. My wife called the ER and they brought me in without triage and sent a chaplain. I lost a foot of my large intestines and almost died."
11. "Apparently your belly button isn't supposed to hurt. It was an umbilical hernia."
12. "I thought I had bad period cramps. Then I thought I had acute food poisoning. Turns out I had ovarian torsion and my ovary was slowly dying over the course of a few days."
13. "Depression. Apparently losing all hope and being numb to joy isn't just a part of growing up."
14. "I had massively heavy periods in my 40s. I thought it was just perimenopause. Turns out it was adenomyosis."
15. "You know how you get all congested after exercising, and wheeze for a bit before everything settles down again? No? Yeah, that’s because most people don’t have exercise-induced asthma. I was in my 30s before I knew that was a problem and not normal."
16. "I kept telling my OB I was worried about my legs/ankles swelling in the later part of my pregnancy. They dismissed it — and told me all pregnant people experience it. At 39 weeks I was sent to the hospital for extra monitoring on the baby due to an irregular test. She ended up being fine but my blood pressure was crazy high. I was induced that night and then given an emergency C-section due to severe preeclampsia."
17. "I used to drop my makeup all the time when I was getting ready in the morning. I thought I was just clumsy. It ended up being myoclonic seizures."
18. "When I was about 19, I randomly heard on NPR that it takes the average person around 20 minutes to fall asleep and I went 'oh sh*t' because apparently, my bar for having sleep issues was way, way too high. To me, a good night's sleep meant I fell asleep within two hours of going to bed and it wasn't "trouble" until I hit three hours. And once I communicated this to my doctor and was finally able to treat my crippling insomnia with medication, my depression and anxiety suddenly got way more manageable as well."
