The body can experience all sorts of aches, pains and random sensations.
Many of these are harmless , and it’s easy enough to ignore them.
But sometimes, it’s a sign of something concerning. An r/AskReddit thread asked, “What small symptom should you have looked into earlier?” .
If you have any health concerns — especially after reading this thread! — be sure to see your doctor.
“I owe my life to my barber.”
“When I was 17 he noticed a mole on the top of my head, and said I should get that looked at. Two things could’ve happened here. One, I could’ve brushed it off. Two, he didn’t have to say anything. Anyway I went to get it checked out and ended up having it cut out with a scalpel. Turns out that it was cancerous but at the very early stages. They did a little more cutting and were able to get everything out.”
“Increasingly painful periods and nasty PMS symptoms in general.”
“When the gynecologist examined me, he also did an ultrasound in the office. He took one look at the screen, told me I could dress and he’d be right back. When he returned, he was carrying his surgery bookings schedule.
“A few weeks later I had a total hysterectomy and bilateral salpingectomy (tubes out).”
“Anything that is persistent.”
“Persistent, raging heartburn. I was young and dumb and uninsured so I put it off. I put it off for nearly 3 months, by which point I was subsisting on plain yogurt and lentils and still having extremely painful bouts of heartburn and vomiting. I had lost a lot of weight and was consistently exhausted and in pain.
“Finally went to the doctor – it was a raging case of H. Pylori infection. It was cleared up with antibiotics, but my doctor warned me at the time that I had probably caused irreversible damage to my stomach and digestive system by waiting so long.”
“If anything suddenly changes without any reason.”
“I realised this when I was 18 – a seemingly healthy 18yr old woman, and one day, my periods just stopped. I thought nothing of it, ‘cos ya know, no periods = yay! A year later, I received a stage 4b cancer diagnosis.”
“My daughter would lie on her left side on the floor randomly during the day, she walked with a wide step, and finally multiple diagnosis for constipation.”
“[It was] abdominal Embryonic Rhabdomyosarcoma.
“After 54 weeks of chemotherapy strolling through an unimaginable medical hell, she is 4 and almost a year in remission and hard to keep up with. Like she’s discovering everything pain free for the first time.”
“My sister started to get frequent migraines just after she turned 22.”
“Well, a few weeks later, she had a massive seizure. Got taken to the emergency room where doctors discovered a massive tumor in her brain and diagnosed her with a rare form of brain cancer. She died within a year.”
“I would clean my ears regularly yet whenever I went to the doctors, they always said there was too much wax and couldn’t see anything.”
“[The doctor] decided to do a total flush. Took 2-3 hours total to get both ears cleared and when we were done, she discovered I had an ear infection that was most likely a year old. As a result, I can’t hear well out of either ear, but that ear in particular has more hearing loss than the other.”
“My right knee had been slightly funky for a couple of years.”
“I told [the doctor] about the clicking and showed him, his face isn’t something I will forget – it was just disbelief and he said ‘Well, that’s not something I have ever felt before,’ sent me off for an x-ray and ultrasound. Turns out I had an osteocondroma (abnormal bone spur) on the inside of my knee and the tendons and so on were literally slipping one side to the other as I bent my knee back and forth.”
“She had this thing where her hand would spasm. It was kind of like a hand tremor. I just assumed that it was a tic.”
“We were in class when she went down and started seizing. Just as quick as she’d gone down, she was awake again and fine. My teacher took her to the nurse and the nurse called her parents. I’ve had to work hard to try and not be angry at the fact her parents chose to take her home that night instead of taking her straight to the emergency room. She had a headache, so they gave her ibuprofen and put her to bed. She died sometime in the night of an undiagnosed brain tumour.”
“I experienced a pain in my left shoulder.”
“Whenever I consumed alcohol, which for me was an infrequent beer. It was odd, but not too concerning, since I didn’t drink very often.
“Turns out, I had Hodgkins lymphoma, and the pain in lymph nodes on the consumption of alcohol was a symptom seen in only a very small percentage of cases (less than 5%?).”
“[My grandfather] went to the hospital when he started coughing (a dry cough, unable to stop).”
“They diagnosed cancer, aggressive form of lung cancer and he died within 3 weeks. The doctor told us, that if he had come earlier, they might be able to save him.”
“I had problems walking as a child and had a big roll in my gait.”
“After 18 years of pain in my legs and feet I had a physio figure out that my hips didn’t line up and that it was highly likely that I suffered a hip dysplasia during birth that was not corrected. My right knee and foot are ruining themselves now as a result of my right leg being shorter than my left.”
“[My father] would be working around the house or at his job and would just trip and fall for no reason.”
“Happened 3 or 4 times. Long story short it was ALS and he died from it just over 3 years after those initial symptoms.”
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– u/Bz3rk
“High resting heart rate.”
“I had a fitbit and didn’t wear it for a few months. When I went back to it my RHR was 90+ from 54. Went to the Dr and found I was in hypertensive crisis with a BP of 212/104. I’m OK now but had a bad Christmas thinking I was about to have a heart attack.”
“She had a rare liver disease that sprung out of nowhere when she was 23.”
“Her initial symptom wasn’t jaundice (yellowing of the eyes/skin) like liver diseases tend to start showing themselves with, but extreme itchiness. She figured it was just really dry skin. Turned out to be PSC (Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis). But, she’s two years post-transplant and doing great!”
“I was much taller than my family.”
“Family are all around 5’5″ but I was 6’5” by high school. We always joked I was a freak or won the genetic lottery.
“Went to my father’s doctor for a physical who noticed the swelling in my hands and ran a blood test. Turns out my growth hormone levels were about 3 times the normal amount. I was diagnosed with Acromegaly.
“Got an MRI which showed I had a tumor on my pituitary gland.”
“I fell on the pavement and got a good scratch on my knee. 24 hours later it starts itching pretty bad.”
“24 hours later I can’t walk and the itching and redness is worse. I end up in the hospital for a week with cellulitis that’s so bad I come very close to amputation and/or death. I had no clue at the time, but my mom said it was bad enough they told her to have relatives come visit just in case it was their last chance to do so.”
“I started craving iceberg lettuce like you wouldn’t believe. Like I’d wake up in the middle of the night and go to the fridge just to eat handfuls of lettuce.”
“Finally decided I should drag myself to the doctor for a few blood tests, assuming I was a bit dehydrated or vitamin deficient or something. My hemoglobin was 5 when it should be 13-16, ideally. My ferritin (iron stores) level was 1, which is literally as low as the test goes. I went straight from the doctor’s office to the hospital to be admitted for two blood transfusions and an IV iron infusion.”
“I had a patient who had experienced persistent headaches for around 5 months.”
“She had been to her local GP who’d told her it was just down to stress. He eventually referred her to me after her symptoms were getting worse and worse and I diagnosed her with stage 4 glioblastoma, a very aggressive form of brain cancer. Sadly she died within 5 weeks.”
“A tiny unnoticeable lump in my throat turned out to be thyroid cancer.”
“I wouldn’t have even caught it had I not gone to my doctor just trying to get my hands on Chantix (to quit smoking). So yeah, lose some sleep over that one, hypochondriacs.”