Working as a doctor can be enormously stressful. According to the American Medical Association, 48.2% of physicians reported at least one symptom of burnout in 2023. It doesn't help that most doctors are buried in paperwork and often have to perform repetitive tasks day in and day out.
Outsiders are often convinced that being a doctor is like being Gregory House; you get to walk around hospital halls doing wacky pranks on your best friend and colleagues and are faced with weird and rare conditions every day.
And, although much of House is fantasy, sometimes life can be even stranger than fiction. Rare medical cases happen, and those who've seen them or experienced them are the best ones to ask. So, recently, one netizen did just that.
They posted a thread titled "Doctors of Reddit, what was a 'one in a million' case that you personally witnessed?" And we have to admit – some of them even would even have House stumped.
#1
Patient but...
I was 15 and a cheerleader (relevant) and I woke up feeling kind of "off" but nothing terrible. Get through the day with mild random symptoms like feeling slightly woozy and a distinct "definitely not wanting to eat" feeling which was unusual but welcome because I was ALWAYS hungry. I didn't think much of it, even when my muscles, especially legs, started feeling stiff. All the more reason to work out, right?
By the time after school practice rolls around, I have a little trouble breathing but it's hot and it's Florida, so whatever. I'm a flanker at this point (front forward guard) so nothing too strenuous so I press on. The during a kick drill, I get a a headache. It's hot because Florida so I dismiss it. Then I get a nose fountain. Not a simple bleed, but what felt like a firehose of blood spraying out everywhere and it would. not. stop. It also looks a little weird/bright. After 15 minutes of ice packs and pressure and no end in sight, coach calls an ambulance.
At the hospital, they cauterize a blood vessel in my nose, which smells LOVELY, and do some tests.
Turns out, I have simultaneously the lowest iron and the highest copper numbers they've ever seen and they are BAFFLED. My mother arrives and gets accosted by questions around potential chemical exposure and environmental hazards. They admit me and start chelation therapy. Throw around a diagnosis of Wilson's Disease, but it doesn't quite fit. Several doctors argue about this. They give me iron pills the size of Twinkies and put me on some IV vitamins. My poop is a very weird color. This concerns them. They keep me for weeks. My copper numbers dip post-chelation and then start climbing again. No one knows what to do. Some idiot recommends actual blood letting (or just taking blood and hoping my system makes better blood to replace it, I guess?) They try this. I feel like a science experiment. It doesn't help.
Eventually they release me from the hospital. My bright blue eyes have a copper halo now. I have to take so many iron pills. And frequent visits to monitor my blood, with random chelation therapy and other treatments thrown in along the way. This continues for YEARS and I just kind of learn to live with it. I am on a special diet to limit copper intake, can't take multi vitamins but have to take a bunch of other supplements, and if I forget to take my iron pills, my symptoms get bad FAST. And my case is written up in a few medical journals.
Fast forward to just before I turn 28. Headaches and weird coughs. Misdiagnosed as a sinus infection, migraines, eye strain. Put on antibiotics. Nasal spray. Glasses I don't really need but wear anyway. Then a doctor find a weird lump in my neck. A thumb sized tumor pressing on my carotid. Fast tracked to surgery because of the location. It's cancer! They remove my thyroid and underneath it, find an extremely weird looking parathyroid. It's HUGE and kind of green colored. They remove that, too, just to be safe.
Because of my weird conditions, they keep me a few extra days to monitor me and consult with my primary/send results there. And my copper and iron levels... normalize. Almost overnight. My iris rings fade and disappear completely. They cut my iron pills down, then eliminate them entirely. For the first time in a decade and a half, I feel "normal". The weird muscle spasms are gone, as is the stiffness, frequent cramps, eye twitches, weird poop, constant low grade nausea... turns out a mutated parathyroid was responsible the whole time!
Image credits: z0mbiegrl
#2
Kid came in still unable to walk at 3 and with funny eye rolling movements that looked like they could be seizures but with normal EEG (this is called oculogyric crisis-basically the eyeballs keep getting 'stuck' in an upward position). Genetic testing showed she had a rare defect in the enzymes that make dopamine and serotonin. The thing is, we use L-Dopa, which is the last precursor to making dopamine, in patients with Parkinsons disease. Her defect was in an earlier step in the process and the enzyme that handles that last step was fine. We were able to treat her with L-DOPA and 5HTP, the final precursor to serotonin. 6 months later, she was running. She'll have to stay on medicine for the rest of her life, but with meds we could unlock her body for her.
Image credits: neobeguine
#3
I was the patient, and the actual ER Doctors missed it (twice) "because she's too young at 22 for a pulmonary embolism". Except I was 6 months postpartum, on birth control, had recently had pneumonia and also had a family history of CVA and MI related to blood clots. I was so high risk, I was basically a DVT waiting to happen.
Thank all of the gods for putting a PA who was fresh out of school and eager to prove himself into my path....he talked the Dr into ordering a CT with contrast and they found a clot the size of a golf ball in my left lung.
The Dr was ready to discharge me, and I likely would have died if not for that PA who trusted their gut (and probably took a ration of s**t from his colleagues until he was proven correct). He knew that something wasn't adding up to simple pleurisy and saved my life by trusting his instincts.
Image credits: dystopiannonfiction
#4
Not a doctor, but lab personnel. Had a case of a male patient being screened and sequenced for metastatic cancer. Results as ovarian primary.
You read that right. Male, anatomically male, not transitioned. Males don’t have ovaries.
The pathologists had us repeat the tests because, clearly the lab made a mistake. The result was the same. Ovarian primary.
Turns out this poor patient had a liver transplant and the female donor had undiagnosed/undiscovered ovarian cancer that had metastasized to the liver, which went wild when transplanted into the male patient who was on immunosuppressant d***s.
I believe a medical journal paper was submitted on the case as it was very bizarre. One of my most interesting cases to work on!
Image credits: _Malara
#5
I am not a doctor, but my Nana was the patient. She defied the laws of reality and modern medicine SEVERAL times.
- got on dialysis at 79 for kidney failure. after 2 years of dialysis, her kidneys were fine and functioned normally, so they took her OFF DIALYSIS. that doesn’t happen. she lived for another ten years and her kidneys weren’t what took her out.
- age 80, she broke her leg up by her hip. she was asthmatic and diabetic and docs weren’t optimistic about the risks of anesthesia but they needed to fix her broken leg. they told us she probably wouldn’t walk again. 7 months later she walked my nephew down the aisle at his wedding without a cane or a walker to help her.
- self managed her diabetes for decades. didn’t take insulin. ate basically nothing but sugar. she was fine.
- got Covid at age 87. still asthmatic. it’s a mild case and she recovers flawlessly.
- shortly before she died, the doctors swore she couldn’t swallow and had her on a liquid only diet. turns out she just didn’t want to eat their nasty hospital food and was pretending very plausibly that she COULDN’T. doctors were floored when they came upon the two of us happily munching on del taco French fries.
- declared infertile after years of trying. adopts a baby. suddenly can’t stop getting pregnant. within 3 years she went from being infertile to having 4 children under the age of 4.
I miss my crazy medical miracle of a grandmother every single day. God bless her and her 9 lives.
Image credits: 2110daisy
#6
Not a doctor, but a little while ago I had been having pain that I couldn't pinpoint the origin of. It felt like really bad acid reflux and back pain and it went around the whole torso in the diaphragm area.
One day I was doing sit ups and I felt like there was a golf ball moving under my ribs so I went to the doctor.
She examined me and didn't find anything unusual so she told me to see a physio since I only felt it during movement.
The physio examined me and didn't find anything either so instead of waisting the appointment he had me lay on my stomach with a pillow under my stomach while he worked on my upper back.
I put my hands under my stomach to keep them from hanging down, and when I was told to take a deep breath I could feel a lump pushing down from under my ribs.
I asked him to feel it and he was stumped as to what it could be so he sent me back to the doctor.
Turns out I had so many gallstones that my gallbladder could be felt through the skin when I took a deep breath.
I was sent to the hospital and had an operation on a friday night. They counted 21 stones, largest one measured 1,2cm and the gallbladder was stretched so thin and so swollen that it ruptured while they were trying to get it out.
All of the doctors in the hospital asked to feel it prior to the surgery because no one had heard of it being possible to feel a gallbladder through the abdomen, so I guess it was kind of rare.
And apparently I should have been in excruciating pain, but I was just taking ibuprofen and trying to do stretches for my back the whole time.
Image credits: Aggis
#7
Literally saw this with my own eyes.
Am an ED nurse in Australia. Was in charge this particular evening when I was called to the trauma room.
Sitting calmly on the side of the bed was a middle aged Polynesian man, with a broken pool cue through his head.
On closer inspection- the tip had gone in through his right eye and pushed his eyeball up but eye was still intact.
You could feel the tip pressing against the skin in his occipital region but no broken skin.
Absolutely not a single drop of blood, and his GCS was 15. (Only thing he ‘couldn’t remember’ was how it actually happened…).
At the time I had a spare ambulance crew in the department so they got on the phone to their comms saying there was an imminent transfer up the road to a tertiary hospital. Honestly all we did was put an IVC in, gave him a shot of IVAB and bundled him out within about 15mins - all the time sitting upright 🤣.
His surgery took hours cuz the flattened cue tip was in danger of clipping a blood vessel as it was being removed (the reverse way it went in). So every movement needed to be checked.
His CT scans from there are apparently legendary. Turns out there is a one in a billion way of essentially pushing the brain upwards and missing every vessel 🤷🏻♀️
A couple of days in hospital for IVABs and he walked out with no adverse effects to brain or eyesight.
Image credits: Rugby_Nut
#8
I'm not a doctor but I work in an ER/trauma center doing patient registration, which puts me up close and personal with a lot of gnarly s**t.
Had a patient come in with a frozen leg. They were pissed off that their doctor wouldn't amputate a perfectly healthy leg and so they submerged their entire right leg in dry ice for close to 7 hours to force a medical team to remove it. The leg was so solid it made a noise when the doctor knocked on it. I can't even imagine the pain this person withstood in order to get the leg cut off.
It was a case of that rare mental condition in which your brain rejects the idea that your body parts are actually yours. Nobody in the hospital I work at had ever seen a case of it before.
Image credits: RiskyMama
#9
Had a patient present to the ED after a bee sting and a pretty bad reaction. We found a softball sized tumor on workup sitting on her cervical spine. Would have been a quad within a year….. that bee sting truly saved her quality of life.
Image credits: LakeZombie09
#10
Not a doctor, but my kid is the 1 in a million.
Routine annual wellness check up for my 11 year old, turned up a solid, immobile, mass in the left side in the supraclavicular area of the neck.
For those of you not in the know, with this finding, it's basically a 1 in 3 chance of it being cancer. The pediatrician did a whole run down to start - ultrasound, chest X-ray, loads of blood work, etc.
The only abnormality was an enlarged lymph node in the area found in ultrasound.
Because of the location of the lymph node, the size, density, and the inability to find another cause for it, our pediatrician referred us to a pediatric general surgeon to consult for a biopsy.
We meet with the general surgeon and after asking a few questions and doing an exam, he steps out to consult with a colleague. He comes back in a few minutes later, asked if we can wait 25 minutes because the hematologist (the /oncologist kind of doctor) wants to drive over to exam kid in person.
So, yeah, we wait about a half hour while he gets to the office. He does a quick exam and basically says, we're going to get more blood work and do a CT scan today. Luckily the office is on the same campus as the children's hospital so he calls radiology, orders a head, neck, and abdomen CT with and without contrast and we head to radiology.
Based on the urgency of the tests, and some private conversations, this was basically trying to find out how extensive and grade the cancer. At this point both doctors were ready to diagnose based on physical exam and previous imaging and tests, but they were being absolutely responsible in confirming their suspicions first.
After the CT scan, we go back to the office and meet with the two doctors.
Who are absolutely GIDDY! First thing out of their mouths is that, it's not cancer. (YAY!)
Kid has cervical ribs. Kid has rib bones in their NECK! Not just on one side, but bilateral (both sides!). And, not only do they have bilateral cervical ribs, they have a bone spur on the left side in the supraclavicular region!
Less than 1% of the population of the world has cervical ribs, even fewer have bilateral ribs.
And my kid, my kid! My kid has bilateral ribs with a bone spur in the exact location to mimic cancer! The pediatric specialists believe that the ultrasound misdiagnosed an enlarged lymph node because there was nothing to indicate it on the CT scan.
Image credits: LimeNo2257
#11
Obligatory not a doctor but my pregnancy with my daughter was one. I was 21 weeks and 3 days pregnant with fluid discharge and braxton hicks. I ended up going to the ER alone after I saw a small amount of blood in the fluid. I get taken back to L&D in a wheel chair just in case where the monitor contractions and tested the fluid. Turns out it was amniotic fluid and I was in active labor for hours. They looked in my v****a and thought they saw her head in the birth canal. I was told there was nothing they could do and I would give birth to her and she would pass naturally since she was too early for intervention. Eventually an Obgyn and ultrasound come in and it turns out that the inner layer of the amniotic sac was intact and it was her feet in the canal. I had a 15% Placental abruption as well because of the weight pulling down. I asked if there was anything that could possibly be done to save her and they eventually transferred me to another hospital with a MFM doctor. I was truncated and put on all the things to stop labor.
I ended up getting super lucky because she was one of the few Doctors in the country that would even attempt to save the pregnancy. I had an emergency rescue cerclage where they washed off the sac, eased it back in and sewed me shut. I ended up in PNU and was impatient for 8 weeks where by some crazy luck I managed to stay pregnant. I was in a ton of meds to stop labor around the clock since I kept having a ton of contractions. I wasn’t allowed to sit, stand, use the restroom or anything it sucked a*s. But I had a few rounds of steroids for her lungs, magnesium to protect her brain. I was so so lucky, eventually at 29 weeks on the dot I ended up with an urgent C-section because my uterus had an 8cm pericardial window and was about to rupture. It was also harder and harder to keep the contractions at bay.
She is now 8years old, super smart, gregarious, and an amazing athlete. I could not imagine a world without my daughter in it. Over 95% of cases like mine end up in fetal and/or maternal death. I just got the luck of the draw that the right doctor was there and everything went right just in time. I did end up with a hysterectomy a couple years later after it fused to my abdominal wall. It was too dangerous to risk getting pregnant again. I have my son and my girl and count myself lucky as hell.
Image credits: BrialaNovera
#12
Not a doctor, but a former legal guardian. In the mid-90s I was assigned to a guy with aids, last stadium, melanoms and all. He was in a hospital at the time, the doctors gave him three months max. So I found a special hospice, excellent place, and drove him there some five hours away. On arrival the director said it’s a matter of weeks, maybe a month.
The guy fully recovered, the guardianship was lifted and he lived a happy and crazy life for years to come.
Image credits: CombinationWhich6391
#13
My Dad..... He rode his bicycle every where when I was a kid. He would ride it from Philly to Atlantic City and Back. The man was a beast. He was also undiagnosed adhd and lacked awareness of his surroundings.
Many accidents later he was routinely seeing a chiropractor. This "doctor" was gods gift as far as my Dad was concerned. One night he came home after and at first he seeemd normal and then he started vomiting. He was incredibly ill. My mom called the chiropractor and they had him come back in... They "adjusted" his neck AGAIN.... So now the small bleed that was happening became a massive bleed. He didnt go to the hospital untill the next day. He was bleedining into his brain. It's a "miracle" he survived. He spent two months in the hospital. They had to take an artety from his leg to replace the one kn his neck. Many papers and studies done one him.
This was the late 80s. I was 7ish. Im 43 now, he's 72. Still a walking talking "miracle".
Don't go to a chiropractor. Even if you survive a brain altering incident, it doesnt mean you will ever be the same.
#14
Not a doctor, but pt was my dad. He had been having sinus infections that would not stay away for about 3 months. Sinus pressure/headache, eye pain, runny nose, cough. He would be put on a steroid and his symptoms would improve for 3-7 days, but then he’d be right back where he started. All lab results were normal.
So he goes to the dentist, a long time family friend, for a regular cleaning/check up where they do the typical xrays. He said after the xrays, he did not see a staff member for at least 20 minutes and that’s when he knew something was up. Dentist came in, pulled up his xray, and started explaining it. My dad had a HUGE tumor…the body sat between his hard palate and sinus cavity and it looked like an octopus the way it had “arms” that were wrapped around some of his jaw and teeth or roots of his teeth or whatever. Imagine my mom’s and me and my sibling’s shock when he came home and showed us after going for a dental cleaning😬
All in all, he obviously had the surgery to remove it. He lost part of his palate, all but 2 of his top row of teeth, and part of his jaw, but they got the whole tumor (which was benign, but they didn’t want to leave any of it and take a chance of regrowth). It took, like, 3 months for him to be able to get impressions done for “dentures” (I say that loosely because it’s a big contraption with a piece to fit the hole in his palate plus extra support due to lack of jaw, along with the typical teeth), and an additional 1-2 years to get them to fit right, especially when eating/drinking. He has a hole from his palate to his sinus cavity, so when they didn’t fit right, food/liquid would slip through and come out his nose. Cool party trick, but not fun.
Now, 10+ years later, you’d never know anything remotely close to that happened to him. Unless you’re at our house at 10pm when he takes his “teeth” out for the night so “can you turn the lights off downstairs?” sounds like “cah oo kuh uh lie off ow air?”
It’s pretty amazing how the stars align. Thankful the dentist caught it when he did. Thankful it wasn’t cancerous (as he had has thyroid cancer a few years previous to that). Thankful our dentist knew of a surgeon in our area willing to take down the beast, and that he did it well. Thankful that that doctor knew of a person that made specialized dentures/mouth prosthesis in our area (the maker was 1 in 15 people in the USA that could make something like that, or some wild statistic). Thankful my dad perseverated, especially going from eating sandwiches (his favorite)/salads/steak/crunchy stuff to literally pureed c**p for 4 months, then had to gradually work his way up after the dentures. I think it took a year and a half before he was able to bite into a sandwich without pain or his dentures slipping out of place or falling out completely.
Image credits: RockRight7798
#15
I am the 1 in a million. Pancreatic cancer at 19. Survived. Still good 25 years later.
Image credits: just-another-cat
#16
Backstory: Dad ran a NICU, very well respected in neonatology, currently runs it for the state as well as a related charity. As a result, growing up I was in there a lot because I had to stay home from school, or they couldn't get childcare, so all the staff knew me and the occasional times there was some sort of media involvement I got dragged along (actually kind of cool going to fancy charity galas/balls as like a 19 year old).
Story: Baby born very premature, severe complications, basically DOA. Resus attempted, failed. Dad declared baby dead, like, yep that's done, game over, sorry ma'am. Now, part of the process with stillbirths or deaths very soon after birth is to give the body to the mother to hold. It's shown to be an important part of the grieving and healing process so that she can get closure (and I hope none of you ever have to experience it). The mother is given a warning that for quite some time after death the baby can spasm, it's this weird evolutionary thing where the brain fires off signals trying to revive the body. They're warned because when it happens a lot of mothers will think there's a chance, or the baby isn't really dead, but the doctors reassure them that it's just this weird evolutionary thing we never got rid of, like our tailbones. The baby isn't alive, the mother is just looking for hope where there is none.
So, mother gets the baby, holding it, crying, husband there stoically being a rock for her. Well she starts freaking out saying the baby's alive, yelling for help. Of course staff come by explaining that no, baby is dead, we told you this. Mother insists, Dad takes a look.
And that's how I wound up an 8 year old at a huge press conference beside my Dad who was talking about something that only one other living doctor had ever seen happen. Baby Lazarus (yes that's what they actually named him) had come back to life because of this weird evolutionary hangup.
Image credits: chalk_in_boots
#17
Not a doctor/RN: One of my first cases a woman with full body skin disease, cancer, head to toe, her hair was gone, her eyelids gone, she looked like a burn victim, but it wasn't burns. it was so bad they had to keep a air control going at all times so her skin would stay in the room, it was flaking off and flying about and her skin was everywhere, in the halls, on clothing. She was miserable and she finally died, which was a blessing. (I think she should have been in the burn unit) but who am I to second guess that? She had some rare skin disease.
Image credits: Late-Chip-5890
#18
I'm not a doctor. My Dad was the patient.
He had stage 4 non-small cell lung adenocarcinoma. We knew he had a short time (5 year survival is about 10% but he had had bladder cancer in the past and also post-polio syndrome, so it was probably a couple of years at best), but he wanted treatment while there was some hope for it to work a bit. He and my Mum had just bought a house in NZ, and he wanted to live there and enjoy the scenery for a bit before he died.
So he starts chemo. And he got the usual chemo side effects, one of which is an itchy rash. 'Chemo rash' was one of the things they warn you about, so it didn't bother him too much. He just put cream on it and didn't complain.
Then my brother visited, he's training to be an EMT so he had some basic medical training, and he looked at the rash, and he said, "Dad please come to the hospital with me." This was in 2022, so Dad would have been in the hospital by himself due to Covid limiting visitors, and he really didn't want to go. But my brother insisted over and over, and eventually Dad gave in just to get my brother off his case.
Turned out, it was not just chemo rash. It was the start of a rare disease called SJS, which in rarer cases can be brought on by allergic reactions. Rarer still for it to be brought on by allergy to chemo d***s. (please don't look up SJS unless you have a strong stomach). He lived in the burns ward for a month or so, while my mum was packing up the old house. ("Luckily" due to his prognosis they let us all visit every day despite Covid)
So yeah. My Dad was allergic to chemo. He lasted another two months after the onset of the SJS. I miss him every day.
(He did get to live in the NZ house, for three weeks. He probably shouldn't have flown, with his lungs in such a crazy bad way flying was a bad idea, but he was "going to live in that house if it's the last thing I do", and it was. We were all there with him when he died).
Image credits: xenchik
#19
Obligatory NOT a doctor: At 3 years old my kid had a total personality change … which for some what justifiable reasons, was blown off by doctors because threenager is a term for a reason lol But I knew it was different. I kept saying, no this isn’t that. For the next several years random AF symptoms would pop up then go away after several months. I must have taken my kid to every specialist in a 500 mile radius lol The doctors started treating me like I had munchausen by proxy. I also felt totally insane because symptoms would go away for new ones to emerge… like when you bring a car to a mechanic and now the engine isn’t making that sound. I begged for tests and MRIs over and over! I was always told … no, why would I want to expose my kid to radiation?!? (Edited to add: MRI doesn’t have radiation, but I was told CT 1st to get to MRI. Which she has had tons of MRIs now and will for the foreseeable future)
By the time they found the brain tumor years later, we had something like 13 different psychological diagnoses! All turned out to be inaccurate. Luckily it was a slow growing brain tumor and it is incredibly rare. Something like 100 people a year get the diagnosis. In excellent news, St. Jude is the most amazing place ever and we are through treatment (Neuro Surgery & Proton Beam Radiation and a slew of meds) and life expectancy is solid! I can not possibly say enough good things about St. Jude and our experience in their research program.
Moral of the story: NEVER not trust your gut instincts as a parent EVER!
Image credits: Puzzleheaded-Set4387
#20
I have a male friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer in his early 30s.
He kept getting pissed when doctors would tell him how "rare" it was.
Image credits: EfficientDismal
#21
My first assist in the OR as a medical student was on a case that was nothing short of a miracle. The patient was a man in his late 70s who supposedly had a huge fungating mass in the ascending colon. He was known to have colon cancer for the past few months only. It was the lenten season, and all of his children went on a pilgrimage a week before the surgery to pray for his recovery. They were a highly religious family but they also believe in the occult and all that. The patient had a talisman that he always wore and a tattoo of multiple sigils with a latin phrase on his chest and arms. I saw all of his scans and there really was a huge mass. The plan for the operation was to remove the mass and a part of his intestine. An exploratory laparotomy was done, but shortly after the patient's abdomen was opened up we noticed that the main surgeon started to look confused. He kept touching the intestines trying to feel where the mass was but he couldn't find it. A couple of minutes went by and the surgeon blurted out "where the f*ck is the mass??" An intraoperative colonoscopy was done which revealed that the mass quite literally disappeared. Imagine, a mass that was so big it was almost obstructing his whole ascending colon just disappeared. The last imaging test was done only 3 days prior. The main surgeon was so flustered. In the end, the patient's slightly inflamed appendix was removed and a mild hernia was repaired instead to not waste the ex-lap that has been done. We were all left scratching our heads after that OR. A week later, the patient was discharged and I didn't have any news anymore about what happened to him afterwards.
Image credits: YoungEnvironmental26
#22
Not a doctor but I do have a pretty weird super rare skin condition called linear atrophoderma of moulin. It just kinda showed up one day, looks like a spiraling line of bruises.
There are less than 50 documented cases of it in reported literature!
Image credits: SimplyPassinThrough
#23
My daughter had an infection in her right breast. It was mastitis, which isn’t particularly rare, but my daughter was only 2 weeks old. This apparently only happens very very rarely in babies that young. I wasn’t even worried because I thought it was just an infection. You get antibiotics and it goes away. I had no idea how serious it was.
They couldn’t test the infection because they were worried about permanently damaging her breast. So they tried to do a spinal tap. That was the worst experience of my life watching the ER doc and two nurses try to shove a needle into my little daughter’s spine. And it didn’t work. She was too small. It f***s me up just thinking about it.
I am forever grateful to the doctors and nurses of that hospital. They took care of us for the week that we were there. They had to take a shot in the dark and treat it with a med that could address staff infection. It worked.
But we didn’t realize how rare it was until the teams of doctors who would come through every day to take a look at her.
Image credits: zerocoolforschool
#24
Women with mass in lower abdomen on scans.
She says she has been having menses regularly.
Exploratory surgery performed. It turns out very enlarged uterus.
Gynaecologist nips the uterus and suddenly a HUGE amount of chocolate looking thick fluid fills up her whole abdominal cavity. It was old menstrual blood under pressure that has been collecting who knows for how long. Probably all her child bearing age if it was congenital.
Testing showed that it was sterile, no infection risk due to the spill but risk of strictures around guts and other peritoneal organs is there.
Gynaecologist probes the cervix & it's totally closed, i.e. no way she has been having regular periods. Turns out she lied out of fear of her husband, she didn't want her husband to find out because one of her presenting complaints was also inability to conceive for long time trying.
It was in a 3rd world country where this is a big deal in society.
#25
I was the doctor’s assistant at the time. I worked for an optometrist who mostly just did general stuff- eyeglass prescriptions, pink eye treatment, nothing too crazy. The weirdest one was the young man who went swimming in a lake with his contacts in and they trapped an amoeba between the contact and his eye, so the amoeba burrowed into the inner part of his eye. He came in thinking he just had a nasty infection and wow, that was an upsetting diagnosis. We immediately sent him to a specialist in Denver.
#26
I am one of those cases.
I had a hysterectomy, and 7 weeks later, a random artery burst open through my newly sewed up v****a.
I had started spotting out of nowhere and my obgyn just happened to be in the office that day so she told me to come in. As soon as I got to the office, the spotting turned into gushing and pumping. I lost 2 liters of blood on the office floor.
She put me on the table and looked inside. Said she's never encountered this before....she could see the artery pump blood out with every heartbeat. She did emergency surgery right there...no meds.
She saved my d**n life. Stopped the bleeding and shipped me off to the hospital for meds.
I had a parade of doctors coming in the next 2 days looking inside me wondering how the f**k an artery burst through my wall....
Eta... my boyfriend was in the waiting room and heard the whole thing. He was certain I was going to die.
This happened during a horrible time in my life, so thankfully I was already in trauma therapy. I definitely needed it after this experience.
For those women that just had a hysterectomy and now have a new fear unlocked.... Im sorry. This situation was NOT normal. Even with the complication, I don't ever regret getting it done.
Image credits: easypeasy1982
#27
My ENT walked into the room on my first appointment and told me I had "the weirdest CT scan" he's ever seen, does that count?
My sinus cavity is like 85% fungus, apparently. He was genuinely surprised I could even breathe through my nose. The CT is kind of horrifying. He thinks it's been like that since I had jaw surgery 15 years ago; once I have surgery to clean it out I'm probably going to OD on oxygen.
Image credits: beetle-boots
#28
Not a doctor yet , but during my summer break, as a medical student, I have to do something called "summer practice" in my country. Keep in mind, I choose to do it in my small town hospital, not in the hospital where my University is. One evening, the doctor I was with decided to do a CT for a patient and it turned out he had situs inversus - basically all his organs are in the opposite part - liver to the left, heart to the right etc ( 1 person from 10.000 present this condition!!! ) .
Image credits: Street-Patient6433
#29
Obligatory not a doctor but my cousin’s baby is one of only a handful of recorded cases ever (around 25?) of having a fully developed third nostril at birth.
Image credits: WaviestMetal
#30
Hydatid cyst located in the brains stem of 8 years old kid , the parasite itself is rare and the location even rarer .
Image credits: Thick_Entertainer_54
#31
Not a doctor, but my mom was the patient.
Starting from 6 weeks old, she has had a wild medical ride. She almost died as a newborn because she had a blockage in her intestines that statistically mostly happened in males, so her doctors almost missed it. She lost a couple pounds as an infant before they figured out what was wrong and got her into surgery. That started her journey, but definitely didn't end it.
She had cervical cancer in her early 20s, but that's not too unusual. She had a hysterectomy after my younger sister was born because the cancer cells just kept coming back. She had her gallbladder removed in her early 30s, and had chronic headaches, pain, and a weak immune system (partially from having part of her intestines removed as an infant) her whole life.
But in her 40s, the headaches just kept getting worse and worse, and she pretty much refused to see a doctor. She also started making really rash, out of character decisions and started acting differently. It was a wild time for a couple of years with her and my dad both breaking up and getting back together multiple times.
Shortly after my 18th birthday, her headaches became much worse. She couldn't move, couldn't stand light, could barely speak without it hurting. She was leaking a clear, metallic tasting fluid (her words) out of her nose. We finally convinced her to go to the doctor. Turns out, she had contracted bacterial meningitis. She was in the hospital for 2 weeks. While there, after getting MRIs done, they realized she had a tumor in her sinus cavity. She was referred to an ENT, who freaked us all the f**k out when she looked up my mom's nose, said "what the hell," and went to get the other doctors in the practice to also look. Apparently you could see the tumor from her nasal cavity.
But that's not all. After more investigation, they realized the tumor had actually started in her brain, ATE THROUGH HER SKULL INTO HER SINUS CAVITY, and had been growing for years by that point. She had two surgeries, the first through her nose to get the tumor there so she could breathe easier, and the second into her skull to remove all of it and patch the hole in her skull. The fluid she was leaking was cerebral spinal fluid. She got meningitis because of the hole in her skull after she suffered a bad sinus infection earlier that year. The tumor in her brain was pressed up against the region that controls impulse control and decision making, and explained why she made some batshit decisions. They might not have caught the tumor in time to save her if she hadn't contracted meningitis (she also stopped smoking after she had meningitis, because she was in the hospital for so long, she figured why not). And after all that, when they sent the tumor off to be tested to see if it was cancerous, they said it was composed of "brain like material," and had no explanation for why she got it, but it wasn't malignant.
She's good now, more than a decade later. She had seizures for a while after the surgery, but we realized a couple years ago they were triggered by stress and anxiety. After therapy, medicine, and a whole lot of work on her part, she hasn't had a seizure in over a year when she had them almost daily to begin with. Pretty wild ride, if you ask me, and one I hadn't heard before or since.
#32
Really wild calf heart on necropsy.
So this was a couple week old beef calf that had a single day of difficulty breathing out in pasture. The farmer gave a dose of antibiotics but the calf died shortly after. He'd otherwise been moving with the herd normally and doing normal calf things. We're expecting pneumonia.
Instead, we open the heart and there's pretty much just one ventricle. By that I mean there's a double outflow right ventricle - so both the aorta and the pulmonic trunk are coming off of the right ventricle - with a common atrioventricular valve connecting to both left and right atria, this tiny little flap of left ventricle, and a ventricular septal defect. The right ventricular wall is really thick and the atria are dilated.
So for those non-medical folks in the crowd, the normal mammalian heart has 4 chambers. Blood enters in the right atrium, goes through the right AV valve into the right ventricle, then out the pulmonary artery into the lungs, back into the left atrium, through its own left AV valve, into the left ventricle, and out the aorta. In this case the blood is going RA to RV to lung, back to LA, then RV, then body. That's not good but apparently it's *good enough* to make it a couple weeks. I had a cat a few years later that was less severe (separate AV valves that regurged less, and a large VSD to send blood back to the right side) who made it to a couple years old.
That's actually kinda sorta how a reptile heart works - like they have three chambers - but the reptiles have all sorts of grooves and nubbins to take advantage of laminar flow and separate out oxygenated from deoxygenated blood that way. They've also got a far lower metabolic rate and oxygen demand compared to a mammal. But yeah, cow with a reptile heart.
#33
Not a doctor, my Mom was the patient. She had breast cancer that metastasized into her bones. One night she was in immense pain and was taken by ambulance to the ER. Turns out the cancer had eaten away a section of her spine, basically disintegrating a part of it. She was told that she likely would only survive a few more weeks.
Instead, she survived another year and learned to walk again. Mind you, she was now hunched and at least 6 inches shorter because her spine was basically compressed down, but she was able to be mobile, walk and live a fairly normally life for a bit until the cancer spread to her brain.
#34
My husband's gallbladder exploded and the surgeon was wildly excited to discover that he had an extra bile duct. The words "one in more than a million" were used.
#35
Not a doctor, but I had the weird condition. My eye started hurting, progressively getting worse over a couple of days, my vision also started to blur in that eye. I went to urgent care, where he gave me a dilating drop, thinking it was something like uveitis/iritis (inflammation of the iris/middle part of the eye). He told me to follow up with an opthalmologist as soon as possible. I got in to see a neutral opthalmologist the next day, maybe two days later. She thought it was optic neuritis (inflammation of optic nerve) based on what she saw on the head MRI she ordered. She gave me steroids and had me check back with her a week or so later. The steroids helped with the inflammation in my eye and around my optic nerve, but she noticed something weird on my retina and sent me to a retina specialist the next morning. He had some scans done and figured out that it was an infection of shingles on my retina. That same day he took a tissue sample from my retina (with a needle, yes, very unpleasant) and gave me an injection of antiviral d***s (again, also with a needle and very unpleasant). I had to get about 5 more injections into my retina over the next couple of weeks. Now, about two years later, I've probably had 20 appointments with him and my vision in that eye is degraded pretty significantly (from 20/15 to 20/45 and with a few holes), but it still works, and it didn't spread to my other eye. Also even more rare to happen to someone at 29 instead of in their 60s/70s. I believe the odds for me were something like 1 in 2.5 million or so.
#36
Mine was so rare they did a case study about it. I was perfectly healthy, no prior medical conditions, no issues with my period/uterus. I was pregnant and had a healthy pregnancy. I labored for 28 hours and then had to do a c-section. They opened me up on the table and said, "oh s**t, there's blood in her cath bag." Come to find out that the reason why was bc my son wasn't coming down my birth canal because he was literally coming THROUGH my uterus and ruptured it. When this happens we only have a few minutes to live. My doctors saved our lives and we are both perfectly healthy.
At my follow up I told my midwife (I labored in the hospital otherwise I'd be dead) and she was so shocked. She said that everyone from the practice which is about 45 years old, was called into a meeting for a case study. It was mine. In all those years and all those doctors they had NEVER had a patient have one. I am so thankful for medicine, providers, and now the practice has experience and can help other women that might be in my situation.
#37
I’m a dentist, not a physician. I had an assistant years ago whose daughter kept breaking out in ulcers in her genital region. She was 3 at the time. Doctors kept accusing the mom of exposing her daughter to sexual predators, had CPS investigate multiple times. She would break down in tears at the office completely exhausted and hopeless thinking her daughter was going to be removed from her care. All she wanted was answers.
She shared her doctors’ findings with me. I told her the symptoms were congruent with Bachets. She went back to her daughter’s docs and asked them to eval for this. They refused saying she was too young to exhibit symptoms of Bachets. She FINALLY found someone to listen to her, and BOOM, kid had it. One of the youngest cases of pediatric Bachets.
Image credits: Acceptable_Lime_5458
#38
Also not a doctor, but my friend was the one-in-a-million case I was there for. We were in high school at the time and she had been suffering from chronic back pain for years, but they couldn't figure out what was wrong. Finally, they discovered that she had a little cyst pressing up against her spine so they were going to go in and drain it with a needle and see if that helped with the pain.
Well, one MRI later, they discovered that her little spine-adjacent cyst was actually an ovarian cyst. The anatomically astute among you will note that the ovaries are nowhere near the spine. Usually. This cyst was near her spine now because it was the size *of a watermelon*. They had to do major surgery to remove it and she missed most of the school year recovering.
If I recall correctly, it ended up being documented in a medical journal it was that unusual. She was an average-weight girl with a little pooch she couldn't seem to get rid of beforehand. Afterwards she weighed ten less pounds and was slightly concave. It was so large it was displacing her other organs. The whole thing was crazy, but thankfully she made a full recovery- healthier than she was beforehand, even!
Image credits: a-really-big-muffin
#39
I’m the patient in this story. Went to the hospital for a kidney stone blocking the left side. While there, I get a kidney stone blocking the right side. Doctors thought I was pill seeking because I kept changing where the pain was, but I pushed for another scan that confirmed I had stones in both kidneys at the same time and both kidneys were now blocked off. That’s pretty rare, but not unheard of.
That night, because clearly I pissed off some ancient deity or something, I had ovarian cysts explode ON BOTH OVARIES.
The doctors were shocked someone could have so much bad luck in such a tiny time frame.
Maths: 9% of women get kidney stones. Of that 9%, only 10% get bilateral ever, and a far smaller number get bilateral at the same time.
10%ish of women will have an ovarian cyst. Of that 10%, about 1% will have them rupture. 30% of women with cysts have multiple cysts at the same time. I don’t know the data on how many women have multiple ruptures at once, but I’m assuming it’s a small number of women.
Someone who can do math will likely be able to figure out how vaguely 1 in a million I am! .
Image credits: The_lady_is_trouble
#40
Not a dr but I shocked the delivery ward.
I was 18 and pretty healthy when I got pregnant the first time. Had placenta previa, which isn't rare but isn't ideal (its where the placenta sits over the cervix, making natural birth near impossible).
What was shocking was the 6 weeks of bleeding from 23-29 weeks, pretty much constantly soaking pads. They couldn't figure out the cause. And then there was a massive bleed that triggered 'labour' at 29 weeks that led to an emergency c section.
I didnt see the placenta (I lost nearly 2L of blood) but half the hospital did. Apparently it was super discolored, almost black, and had chunks missing. They sent it away for testing and I never did find out the cause but went on to have two pretty normal, full term pregnancies. I did have cholestatis the third time, thats rare but not unheard of.
And my son survived, perfectly healthy and somehow huge for his gestation at 3 pounds 12 onces. He turns 10 on Monday.
Image credits: Key_Corgi_7435
#41
Patient with no hope of waking up, made DNR, the next day woke up and a few weeks later went home.
Image credits: pancakefishy
#42
I’m not a doctor, but I did diagnose a rare disorder. Starting in his teen years, my friend started getting what he called “spells”, where his hand and feet would twist up all weird. It would last for a few minutes then go away. Doctors told him it was psychosomatic and put him in counseling. I met him several years later, when he was in his early twenties. I was in grad school at the time and had taken a class on neurological disorders. I saw those “spells” and thought, that looks like chorea or athetosis. He finally went and saw an actual neurologist. Bam! Got diagnosed with a very rare choreathetosis disorder. It was very well controlled with a seizure medication, and went away in his thirties. .
#43
Not a doctor - but I’m the one in a million (probably less).
I was diagnosed with Osteogenesis Imperfecta as a child (~1 in 15000 people). No big deal, I have a mild form and it hasn’t impacted me much other than blue sclera and frequent fractures.
A year ago, I found out during a check-up that I had a 5cm aortic root aneurysm that needed immediate surgery (I had a valve-sparing repair a week later - all is well). Turns out I’m one of the very very few people whose osteogenesis imperfecta present itself with Marfan/vascular ehlers-danlos symptoms (which affect the cardiovascular system). I have since been tested to check I don’t have two separate mutations (one that would cause OI and one for marfans or ED), but I don’t.
Currently there’s only a handful of cases in the literature of people with this OI/ED overlap syndrome (and even fewer with a recorded aneurysm) so I think the maths works out to much less than one in a million….
#44
Of course, not a Dr.
My kid was found to have seizures. Did the EEGs and it turns out he’s got a rare developmental epilepsy that primarily presents in sleep. It’s .5% of all paediatric epilepsy cases. There’s less than 200 cases in our whole country. Then we did gene testing and found that he’s got a genetic mutation with less than 300 people identified worldwide.
#45
Not sure if this was one in a million but a woman needed bone marrow transplant but her blood type was very unique and couldn't find the donor.
She had chronic pain because of us so her visitation was very frequent and all the nurses on the floor did know her situation well.
This was ongoing for about 3yrs and one day she came, which was no surprise and we knew why she came.
One day she came for broken finger and when one of my co-nurse asked her about the chronic pain (since we all knew her symptom) she daid "oh! No more pain!" And to our surprise, when we ran the test, she no longer needed the transplant.
All of us were shocked, she was shocked and we all celebrated.
About a month later, she came back with the pain complaining about the same symptom she had and when we ran test, she needed the transplant again.
We were completely confused but, long story short, The later who came as broken finger was the lady who needed bone marrow twin sister, whom got fostered in separate environment. And before she came for her broken finger, she DID have had same chronic pain as the one who battling.
We been using same chart without validly identifying her. .
#46
I'm kinda that case. My doctor threw a hail Mary to prevent knee replacement, and it worked. He uses 3 injections of face filler (gelzan?) to build a donut to hold up my kneecap. I have to have it redone every 6 months (I'd prefer 4, but insurance...), but it alleviates ~75% of the issues. Insurance had already authorized a replacement and I was already booked on his surgery schedule when he decided to try this, so when I say hail Mary, that's even what he calls it. When I told him it worked his face looked like I told him unicorns and pigs were flying around outside. He made me repeat that it worked 3x before his brain grasped it, then he started asking really specific details, left the room and grabbed 2 PAs and another surgeon that he brought back to ask even more questions. Not exactly one in a million, but definitely a very very very long shot that worked.
#47
Not a doctor but my sister had an enormous tumor on her kidney in her early to mid-twenties and the doctors were so astounded that a bunch of them would pop in during exams prior to her surgery because the type and size of the tumor was rarely seen in people her age. Plus it was only attached by a narrow trunk which was a relief since they only had to remove 10% of her kidney to remove the tumor.
My sibling and I (not my sister) also have a rare bleeding disorder that doesn't occur on either our paternal or maternal sides of the family and the hematologist wanted us to get a genetics test for it because he was so astounded by it. .
#48
(Not a doctor) My friend was recently in the hospital for over a week with high fever, trouble breathing, fatigue, lots of weird symptoms. They thought flu, covid, pneumonia, bronchitis, tested for everything and it didn't match anything. They then found out he's a landscaper so started evaluating for dirt borne illnesses. They believe from the scans he was infected a long time ago as his lungs look so bad. He works with a crew and no one else had any symptoms. They narrowed it down to some sort of fungal infection likely from animal droppings. They thought maybe histoplasmosis, blastomycosis, hantavirus, something like that but haven't determined anything for sure. None of these are common at all in our area. They want to continue evaluating him so asked him to come in for free appointments as a test subject.
#49
I have intractable medication resistant bi-lateral temporal lobe epilepsy. My epileptologist goes to conferences about MY brain occasionally. I wish I was invited lol.
#50
My father at 53 had a full aortic dissection ascending type A, that thing that killed John Ritter. He walked himself into the ER, gut swelling from blood being dumped from his heart, blood pressure 43, did 14 hours open heart surgery with a full mechanical valve replacement and pace maker dependent. He turns 60 next month. Oh and his sister died from the same thing at 53….
Miraculous he lived, stranger still two siblings had the same condition, he is part of lots of studies.
#51
I've seen a couple of cases of Stiff-Person Syndrome, which has an incidence of around 1 in 1,000,000, although these people already had their diagnosis so I can't claim credit.
#52
Not a doctor, but I’ve been an unusual patient! I got a dramatic, textbook case of IgA vasculitis (aka HSP) when I was about 19. Definitely not unheard of, but a lot more common in kids than adults. I got to see doctors pause to look stuff up while treating me and chat with my mom (a doctor) about how unusual it was. To this day, when a new doctor gets my medical history for the first time they’re like 👀👀👀.
#53
I get schwannomas. I'm about to have my tenth one removed. I've never met anyone else who gets them. Fortunately, mine always occur in the arms and legs (peripheral), not in my head.
