We’ve all heard the story: someone seeks medical attention for something seemingly insignificant, and it ends up being life-altering. Well, over on Quora, people were discussing instances where they sought medical help just to be safe, and survived only because they decided to go to the doctor. Here are their stories.
1.“A few years ago, I got a small cut on my knuckle. No big deal, right? It was just a small little nick; it didn’t bleed much. A few days go by, and my middle finger swells up. I can hardly bend it. I’m thinking, ‘Ok, it’s infected… I’m sure it will clear up in a few more days.’ Around four days after that, the cut turns into a small crater, with the edges raised with a black-looking scab inside…I tell myself it’ll get worse before it gets better and leave it alone for another day or two, and if the swelling doesn’t go down, I’ll get it checked out. After all, I don’t have a fever, so it can’t be that bad, right?…”
“…The next day, I went to the E.R. It was a typical emergency room visit: long wait times, crying babies, all the fun stuff. After about 45 minutes I got called into Triage. I told them why I was there; she took my vitals and asked questions while she looked over my finger and stopped abruptly in the middle of her sentence, got up, and asked me to wait for just a moment.
She walked off and quickly returned. ‘We’ll get you into a room to see the doctor.’ I thought it was a little strange that I was going straight back to a room, especially considering the waiting room was packed wall to wall with people. I didn’t think much of it other than that. I return to a room, and the illusive emergency room doctor appears within minutes. He introduces himself and says, ‘We’re going to get you started on some IV antibiotics. When was it that you cut yourself?’ I explained it had been maybe a week.
He looked at my finger for a few seconds, got up, put his gloves in the garbage, rolls back towards me in his chair. He says, ‘It’s a good thing you got here when you would’ve would’ve waited about another 24 hours; you would have had multiple organ failure.’ I’ve always heard that when you get blood poisoning from a wound, you’ll see a red line move up from the wound toward your heart. I always pictured a much darker, near-perfect straight line than the one the doctor had just pointed out. It was so light, and you wouldn’t even notice if you weren’t supposed to be looking for it. So, yeah. Another 24 hours and I’d probably have died or been very close to it… all from a tiny cut on my knuckle.”
—Chris O.
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2.“I had a cardiologist tell me repeatedly that I was having panic attacks. He said I didn’t have angina. He sent me for a stress test, which I could not do because of ‘imaginary’ chest pain. I insisted on an angiogram. He mocked me and scoffed. I was desperate at this point and kept insisting. He angrily ordered one and told me it was a waste of time and that what I needed was a psychiatrist. I showed up for my 7 a.m. Friday appointment…”
“…I don’t know what he had written or told them, but I sat there all day. Finally, at about 5 p.m., I went in. (I have no memory of anything after flicking a cigarette away at 7 when I arrived.) I woke up Monday in terrible pain. I had no idea what had happened. My wife told me that after just a few minutes, the doctor had come out and said they could not complete the angiogram because of severely clogged arteries (including the one that causes the ‘widowmaker.’ They put me in the cardiac ICU and kept me heavily sedated until Monday when they could operate. I had a triple bypass. The cardiologist told me I was fortunate to be alive. Oh, and that cigarette I flicked away was my last one. I can take a hint.”
—Tom A.
3.“There were literally no symptoms other than exhaustion. I got home from work and went to start dinner. I became aware of being absolutely completely exhausted. I wanted to lie down and sleep on the kitchen floor. I got myself to bed, then called my dad to cancel our plans for the next day…”
“…My stepmother had flulike symptoms the prior week. After finally going to the care center, she was diagnosed with a bacterial infection (not contagious) rather than the flu. Antibiotics cleared it right up. My dad suggested I go in to see whether what I was experiencing was viral or bacterial. I told him I would go in the morning. I just wanted to sleep, and I was sure I’d feel better once I’d slept.
My dad pushed the issue. I resisted. He insisted. I told him I was too tired to drive. He finally drove the 25 minutes to my house, put me in his car, and took me to the ER — I protested the entire time that I just needed sleep. In the ER, they ran tests and could find nothing wrong. However, the ER doctor was concerned about my elevated heart rate. Not ‘heart attack’ elevated. But above normal. I told the doctor it was all the excitement of all the tests and poking, combined with me being so tired. I asked the doctor to give me 30 minutes of peace to relax, sleep, and bring my heart rate down. Thirty minutes later, he came in and told me my heart rate wasn’t responding to my attempted zen, and he was admitting me.
Again, I told him that it wasn’t necessary. I just need sleep, and I’ll be better in the morning. They said perhaps I was just dehydrated. So, I was to remain overnight hooked to an IV. The doctor admitted me. At some point after midnight, a nurse came in and put something into my IV. I was too asleep to care. In the morning, they hooked up another bag to my IV. Again, I just wanted to sleep. When I had been there for 24 hours, primarily asleep, they had changed another bag of fluids, and I was on my third. I was awake enough to ask the nurse what that was. She said the doctor had ordered powerful antibiotics. It turns out that if I had slept it off at home, I would have never awakened. I was in the hospital for two weeks, being treated for acute sepsis with intense intravenous antibiotics. No symptoms other than exhaustion, and I was within hours of dying.”
—Alden B.
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4.“A couple weeks before Christmas, I was sleeping in when my husband came into the bedroom and told me he was having chest pains and had had them the evening prior. Needless to say, I was up, dressed, and on the way to the ER in about five minutes flat. Unfortunately, due to COVID, I was not allowed to go in with him and had to wait several hours at home with periodic updates from him…”
“After a few tests, they determined he had had a mild heart attack. They also discovered he had four blocked arteries, including the left main, a couple of which were about 99% blocked. The next thing we both knew, he was in the surgical intensive care unit and was scheduled for emergency bypass surgery the following morning.
The surgeon did a triple bypass, and my husband was in the hospital for ten days, coming home on Christmas morning. He’s 59 and had no symptoms. While he doesn’t go for an annual physical, the surgeon told us that at his age, with absolutely no symptoms, our family doctor would not have had any reason to go looking, even if he had seen her for a yearly visit. I never would have thought a mild heart attack could be a good thing, but had he not had it, things could have had a very different outcome.”
—Dianne M.
5.“One morning about a year and a half ago, I woke up with a mild pain in my eye. I figured I’d probably rubbed my eye in my sleep and maybe scratched the cornea. No big deal. It would heal in a day or two. But it would be a problem on the drive to work, so I called in sick…”
“…By noon, it had not improved, so my roommate talked me into calling the eye doctor. He usually has about a three-week wait for an appointment, but I called. I explained the issue to the receptionist, who put me on hold. When she returned to the line, she asked if someone could drive me to the eye clinic at 3 p.m. that day.
My roommate drove me to the clinic, and they hustled me in. The doctor determined that I had a corneal ulcer, which can very quickly result in permanent vision impairment or blindness. She said the epithelium was gone, prescribed copious amounts of antibiotic eye drops, and told me to come in for a follow-up the next day, which I did.
The next day, the senior doctor examined me and put a patch on to hold my eye shut. He wanted me to come in again the next day. ‘But tomorrow is Saturday,’ I said. ‘Yup. ‘The senior doctor and one of the assistants opened the office on a Saturday just to examine me. It took about three more days until I could see clearly, but a week later, the doctor said there was no evidence that anything had been wrong. If it hadn’t been for the extraordinary work of that clinic, I would have lost my vision.”
—Peter C.
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6.“A workmate of my brother’s dropped dead. Heart attack. No warning signs. So my sister-in-law, a brilliant woman, told my brother to go to a cardiologist and get tested…”
“…My brother is very active, fit, and healthy and has no problems or warning signs that would suggest heart problems. But she told him to go, so he went. They said they would send the results to his doctor in a week. They called him the next day. The day after that, he was in hospital getting a stent put in a blood vessel that was 95% blocked. He had no clue that he had any problems at all. He could have gone at any time.”
—Becca C.
7.“When I was a teen, I suffered from something I called a ‘back attack.’ I would get excruciating pain in my lower back. It was so bad that I couldn’t eat, sleep, or walk. My parents took me to the doctor, where, after a few months, they noticed that I had fused vertebrae. He wrote a note that allowed me to ‘go until it hurts, then stop’ for all physical classes. Whenever I would get an attack, my parents would take me to urgent care…”
“…You pay pretty dearly for it, but cheaper than an ER. Anyway, I’d get a shot at something called Toradol — a non-narcotic pain reliever. It didn’t help the pain, but it relaxed me enough to fall asleep. When I woke up, I was back to normal. I don’t know why it worked, but it did. Fast forward four years. This happens at least 2–4 times a year.
Finally, the new urgent care doctor told me this was upsetting; something didn’t feel right, and if I didn’t get better, I should go to the ER ASAP. This time was different. It had been three days, and I couldn’t eat, drink, or sleep. As I was hugging the toilet (newly 18-year-old senior), I decided to go to the ER. My dad helped me to the car; by the time I got there, I couldn’t walk, and he carried me in. I was in septic shock with a temp of 106ºF and extremely dehydrated.
I heard the doctor tell my parents to prepare for the worst, and I slipped into a coma as I listened to my mom faint from the news. It turned out that for years, I had this little ovarian mass. It grew until it couldn’t support its weight and twisted up the fallopian tubes and ligaments. At some point, it finally cut off its blood supply and rotted in my pelvis. I was sick for months after but did finally recover.”
—Elena R.
Phil Fisk / Getty Images/Image Source
8.“Two years ago, I decided to lose some weight over the summer by eating right, not snacking after dinner, and walking daily. I was so proud that I had met my target weight by the start of the new school year and was down one waist size. So I was a bit surprised when I was having trouble climbing the steps to our school’s third floor. I should mention that I was a wrestling coach. Climbing stairs never made me tired!..”
“…I would get winded just from that. I also felt warmer than normal and experienced dizziness from time to time. This lasted for two weeks while I waited for an appointment with my new doctor. I finally went into the ER after my neighbor, who is a fireman/EMT, told me that my blood pressure and heart rate were higher than normal. I was sent home after being diagnosed with dehydration and was told to drink more fluids (which I did). I was also supposed to provide an all-day urine test sample (1 large, gross container) to determine my kidney function.
I took the morning off school the following Monday to return the container to the hospital for testing. I had been having problems sleeping the night before (which was becoming a nightly event), and I woke up soaking wet from sweating all night. I was still so tired that I took a cat nap before going to the hospital lab. The ‘cat nap’ lasted two hours. Finally, my wife came over and asked me why I had not gone to the lab yet. I told her I was tired and just needed one more hour of sleep. When the alarm went off again and I didn’t respond, my wife suggested I call off for the rest of the school day (which I did).
When she found me sleeping again, she asked if I was sweating and was short of breath. I said yes to both. She asked if my heart was racing. I said yes again. She asked if I had pain radiating down my arm. I stopped her right there and told her that, no, I was not having a heart attack. She suggested I go to the ER anyway. I told her I was there last week and was just dehydrated. I wasn’t going to go through all that again. She walked away and let me rest.
About five minutes later, my wife woke me up to tell me to get ready to go to the hospital. As I was getting ready, I heard an ambulance siren getting closer. She casually mentioned it was for me, and boy was I pissed! The paramedics came in, checked me out, and asked if I could walk to the gurney, which they had been waiting for me outside. I walked over, hopped on and off, and we went in the ambulance. I told the paramedics I could walk in, but they insisted on sending me in on the gurney. By this time, I was already prepped with an IV, and all my vital signs were taken in transit.
I told the doctor on duty that I had already been to the ER the previous week and that it was just a bout of dehydration. The doctor told me I wasn’t going anywhere and that my heartbeat was at 180 beats per minute! They connected me to an EKG, which found no issues with the heart other than the excessive heart rate. Just by luck, there was an endocrinologist there. He looked at my vitals, then asked me some questions, all answered with a yes. He told the others there that I was in a Thyroid Storm — when the thyroid sends out hormones in an uncontrolled way. He prescribed medicine to calm down my heart rate and set me up for a thyroid scan to see if there were issues with cancer or nodules in my thyroid. Luckily, there weren’t.
I was still going to have to stay in intensive care until my heart rate was below 100. My endocrinologist showed me just what hyperthyroidism looked like — shaking hands (and tongue), sweating, rapid heartbeat, etc. He told me it would take a while to get the storm under control, but I could leave once all my vital signs were near normal. Little did I know it would take a week in intensive care before I could be released. By that next day, I was feeling a bit better, and a doctor in intensive care came in to check on me.
She didn’t tell me what a thyroid storm was and told me it was best to not ask about it until I was feeling better. I asked how bad I really was when I came in. She said that if my wife hadn’t called for an ambulance, I would have been in the ER the next day with a heart attack. Chances are they would not have been able to save me if I had waited. I looked up a thyroid storm when I got home. An untreated thyroid storm has a 75% mortality rate. If my wife hadn’t taken action that day, I would not be writing this.”
—Anthony P.
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9.“When I was 28 weeks pregnant with my last baby, I went to the hospital for what I thought was terrible indigestion. I had been uncomfortable for a couple of days. I couldn’t eat or sleep and was getting dehydrated. I made my husband go out in the middle of the night to get Zantac and Tums to try to help. I had him take me to the hospital when it was unbearable to take a deep breath, and the medications weren’t helping to ease my symptoms…”
“….I had been on bed rest the entire pregnancy because of pre-eclampsia. I had two little boys at home to take care of and not a lot of family support. When we got to the hospital, my OB was called. He told me it was time to transfer my care to a bigger hospital. He calmly told me I had to be transferred via ambulance but didn’t want me to stress out about it. I wanted my husband to drive me, but my doctor was adamant I go via ambulance.
Once at the new hospital, I was given Lasix but still wasn’t told anything. I had to have a plethora of tests run and was constantly getting up to go to the bathroom. It was exhausting. After a couple of days, one of the doctors at the new hospital told me that I was fortunate to have come in when I did. If I had waited to go in another 12–24 hours, I would have died. My pre-eclampsia turned into eclampsia, and my lungs had filled with fluid. Until then, I had no idea how serious the situation was. No one said anything to me or let on that it was an emergency. When I asked my OB why he didn’t tell me, he said it was because he didn’t want to stress me out. 11 years later, I still panic a little when I have symptoms of indigestion.”
—Sterling R.
10.“I got up one morning, and my left hand was swollen. I couldn’t find an insect bite, but I thought maybe a spider bit me in my sleep. This was in the early ’90s, before the internet was a resource for research. I spent the day with family and attended a funeral. The next morning, the swelling went up to my elbow. Still thinking about an insect bite, I took some Benadryl and carried on. The next morning, my entire arm was swollen, and I went to a walk-in clinic…”
“…The physician’s assistant took one look and sent me to a doctor nearby. He asked me to stop moving my arm. I showed him that I could bend it, and he said stop! The doctor was a vascular interventionist. At that time, I was not a nurse and had limited medical knowledge. I thought that was strange, but I went.
The doctor there looked at my arm and asked me to meet him at his clinic next door in the hospital. He didn’t give me a diagnosis; just go there, and he would see me there. I finally realized that this was serious when the nurses were shaving my chest, attaching electrodes, and asking me to sign paperwork all at the same time.
I had a blood clot at the brachial artery. The doctor removed it while I was under conscious sedation, and I spent a week in the cardiac ICU on a heparin drip, confined to the bed. Moving the arm could have dislodged part of the clot, sending it to my brain or lungs. And I stood outside the hospital and smoked a cigarette before I went inside! I was so impressed by the doctor and the nurses that I went back to school and graduated from the nursing program. That’s how I became a nurse!”
—Flint R.
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11.“Back in 2004, I was working long hours and not eating much, so it didn’t seem too unusual that I was losing weight and felt tired all the time. But then, one day, I simply bumped a door knob when entering a room and woke up the next morning with a bruise the size of Texas on my hip. It stretched from my ribcage to below my waist. My wife insisted I get it checked out, so I visited our local urgent care center…”
“The physician there told me my blood had just thinned out because I was taking a great deal of Excedrin lately dealing with some frequent headaches, and told me to lay off the aspirin and go home. Three days later, I was still feeling fragile and tired, so I called my doctor and went in to see him.
He remarked that I had lost a LOT of weight. I weighed about 225 pounds when I saw him last, but I was down to 145 pounds. He immediately sent me for some blood tests. After another week of pure lethargy, he called me back. My white blood cell count should have been around 6,000 for a healthy person, but mine was over 200,000. This indicated something severe like cancer or AIDS, so naturally, I was freaked out. Another round of tests showed I had leukemia — CML, to be specific. But it had not entered the blast phase yet. I had caught it early enough to begin treatment.
I was referred to an oncologist who put me on a battery of drugs, including a new chemo that you take daily in pill form instead of the typical infusion. I got really sick at first because the meds were cleaning out my system, but within six weeks or so, I started putting some weight back on and regained much of my energy. Two years later, there was no sign of leukemia in my blood, and now, 18 years later, I am still taking the medication, but I am also still in remission and healthier than ever. I’m alive today because I got a bruise, and my wife made me do something about it. Moral of the story: Don’t overlook the small things. They are usually indicating something more extensive you haven’t discovered yet.”
—Kenneth B.
12.“When I lived in Canada, I was prescribed the antibiotic doxycycline for an infection. I took it and went to bed. When I woke up, my hands hurt (like so much I literally could not turn a doorknob or hold a spoon), and I had this bizarre bullseye-shaped rash on both elbows. I went to the ER. The triage nurse took one look at me and, before we finished the intake paperwork, hustled me to the back to see a doctor…”
“…The total time between when I walked in the emergency room door and when a doctor looked at me was less than two minutes. The doctor took one look at me and immediately ordered a shot of adrenaline. The total time between when he ordered it and when a technician was sticking a needle in my arm was another two minutes. I was in the early stages of anaphylactic shock from a severe and previously unknown allergy to doxycycline. Before the technician stuck me with the shot, she said, ‘I’m so sorry, this is going to hurt.’ She was right. It sucked.”
—Franklin V.
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13.“In October 2019, I was out shopping in the morning, and I had to use the restroom while out. When I wiped, there was blood on the toilet paper (light pink, it was diluted), and I knew something wasn’t right. I figured it might be a UTI or kidney stone, as I get those both frequently, but I didn’t worry too much. Having stage four kidney disease, I sometimes get blood in my urine as well, so I swept it under the rug…”
“…Later that evening, I started feeling ill and went to the bathroom in my home. This is where things get fuzzy. Somehow or another, I ended up sitting on the floor and could NOT find my way out of the bathroom. It was one door, a tiny room- not rocket science. I was in a state of total confusion.
Long story short, I was in there for hours, and my roommate, who was a former EMT and firefighter, found me. He insisted on calling an ambulance, but I fought him on it. I’m glad he didn’t listen to me. I had about an hour to live. When the medics came, my blood sugar was 14.
At the hospital, they diagnosed me with respiratory failure, kidney failure, double pneumonia, sepsis, a C. Diff infection, and cholecystitis (my gallbladder was infected). I remember being in the ER, surrounded by doctors, nurses, and medical students…everyone was staring at me with a look of dread as if I was going to die. All I could keep thinking was how I could not breathe (I kept trying to sit up to get air, but they wouldn’t let me) and that this is what death is like. I’m dying.
They put me out and intubated me, gave me an IO (this is where they drill a hole in your leg in a life-threatening emergency to administer antibiotics), and put me in the ICU. I was in a coma for eight days; they did not expect me to live. Ha! I showed them! I’m sure they were glad I did, too. When I got my tube out and began to sit up in bed, nurses would come by my room and express their surprise to me about how I was doing so well. I was in the hospital for two weeks, but it took me over a year to fully recover. I am one lucky person.”
—Kimberly M.
14.“I was having rather extreme bowel issues. I could not evacuate my bowel for days on end, and when it did, it practically exploded. I knew the pain was extreme, but it was still just constipation, right? I was beginning to suspect a blockage with some of the other types of (lower) abdominal pain. I had a specialist who was looking at the problem and had even had MRI and CAT scans, though the results of those had not come back to me yet. One night, it became truly unbearable, and as humiliated as I was to take this issue to the ER, I decided I would…”
“I drove myself because I am stubborn. At the ER, they discovered that I had excruciating pain not only in the lower abdomen but in the upper areas as well. When they touched anywhere in the abdominal area, I went pale as a ghost and practically levitated off the table. I didn’t have a concerning level of fever, though I did have one. (I usually never run a fever when sick, weirdly, but there we were.)
First, they discovered my specialist had just gotten married and was gone on a month-long honeymoon, so that’s why no one had looked at or considered my lower abdominal scans- which clearly showed a tumor more significant than a grapefruit (but smaller than a football apparently) which was strangulating my colon, sigmoid, and rectum areas. That alone was alarming… but it got worse.
They did a full chest and hips scan and discovered that my gallbladder was so full of stones it had backed those stones (each the size of a large chickpea) into the ducting that connected to the liver and forcibly into the liver itself. I would need emergency surgery on both fronts right then. When they opened me up, they discovered the lower tumor had strangulated the rectum, sigmoid, and colon tissue, leaving me with an ileostomy and the hope of an eventual J-pouch to restore functioning of some kind, as all that tissue was dead and necrotic.
Then they discovered that not only was the gallbladder full of huge stones, not only had it backed up in the ducting and liver, but the gallbladder and a portion of the liver were gangrenous. It was killing me by poisoning the blood that pumped through and around it. I had life-threatening sepsis. The only solution was to remove a third of the liver, all the gallbladder, much of the ducting, and some blood vessels.
For five days, I was in the ICU, being pumped full of antibiotics, and they still did not think I would make it. I did, obviously, though, without several organs when I was finally released- after a week in the ICU and a month in the hospital. All because I thought I had some constipation or maybe, at worst, a blockage, and I didn’t want to ‘be a baby about it’ or be embarrassed by going into the ER. I was probably a few days away from death and didn’t even know it.”
—David S.
Bevan Goldswain / Getty Images
15.“About ten years ago, we came home from a weekend at the beach, and I started to feel a bit ill… like maybe I was coming down with the flu. I felt awful but thought, ‘Okay, I have the flu. I’ll get better in a couple of days.’ My wife was alarmed and wanted to take me to the E.R., but I kept saying, ‘No, I’ll get better in a couple of days.’ Then, one afternoon, I started hallucinating. In my practical mind, I knew we did not have a blue pickup truck in the living room, but when I told her about it, she said, ‘Okay, that’s it. We’re going to the E.R. right now!…'”
“So, dutifully, we went. Within 30 minutes, I was in isolation. They thought I had bacterial meningitis. By this time, I was relatively out of it. I was immediately admitted. A day of tests turned out that I had a giant abscess attached to my liver, and my fever peaked at about 104. I was put on antibiotics and had a drain from the abscess.
The doctors told my wife that if we’d waited another day, I likely wouldn’t have made it because of the sepsis. I was in the hospital for two weeks and then sent home with a drain into a bag taped to my abdomen. I don’t remember much about that first week. I was out of work for about a month. Luckily, I worked for a university with a tremendous temporary disability program. A nurse stopped by twice a week to check on me. I’m grateful to my wife for saving my life. And I listen to her now when she says it’s time for the E.R. Well, it hasn’t happened again, but I still listen to her.”
—Steve B.
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Do you have a similar story of a time you went to the doctor because of a gut instinct, or “just to be safe,” and it ended up possibly saving your life? Tell us in the comments or in this anonymous form.