“Itchy hands and feet”: 15 times people Googled their symptoms—and turned out to actually be right
Google-educated "doctors" are flocking to a recent thread asking for stories of successful self-diagnoses that impressed real medical staff. Though few responses came from actual doctors and nurses, as the post requested, there are hundreds of Redditors who have experienced this phenomenon as the patient.
Unfortunately, many of them had to fight through real doctors and nurses who initially dismissed them for googling their symptoms. Jaded by many incorrect self-diagnoses from past patients, some medical professionals are quick to brush off those who got it right.
A lot of folks have expressed frustration with this issue online, which may have prompted u/PumpkinAino to start this Ask Reddit thread.
"Reddit Doctors and Nurses: What's the most impressive case of Google 'self-diagnosis' that turned out to be true?" they asked.
Some of the commenters saved their own or other people's lives with their independent research, while others languished with troubling symptoms for years before a practitioner finally took them seriously. It's interesting how many people in the latter camp are women or have a larger body than society thinks they should.
These 15 cases we picked out help prove why nobody should be dismissed outright just because they have an opinion on what's wrong with their own body. Not all of the self-diagnoses come from Google, either, but each is impressive in its own way.
1. Ménière’s disease, diagnosed by Dr. Google
"I started getting ringing in my ears and sometimes my hearing would become 'muffled' for short periods of time like I was under water. I was reading everything I could find relating to my symptoms and absolutely everything pointed towards Ménière’s disease. Still, 'it’s anxiety,' and my GP laughed and called me Doctor Google."
"Eventually ended up at an Out of Hours clinic one night because my vertigo was so bad and I’d completely lost my hearing in one ear. This lead to a referral for an MRI and eventual diagnosis of… Ménière’s disease." —u/MediumPeteWrigley
2. Cherry cola pee means rhabdomyolysis
"Around an hour into my shift at a hospital lab I went to the bathroom and noticed my urine looked like cherry cola. I talked to my former paramedic boss, told her what I was experiencing, and that I was concerned I had Rhabdomyolysis. She agreed and told me to head to the ER."
"I walked myself across the street to the ER and told the PA the story and told her I was worried about Rhabdo. She kind of dismissed me. ... 2 hours later she comes back with a nurse carrying two bags of saline and tells me that my CK levels are so high the lab is having to do serial dilutions to quantify the results which is why it’s taking so long." —u/oosirnaym
3. Double uterus
"For years I had horrible periods, and had that whole ‘could be endo, could be fibroids’ runaround. But I also couldn’t use tampons - I would somehow just bleed past them, which made less than no sense—and my period cycle was so off sometimes I swore it was like I had two uteruses."
"Then one day I was listening to a podcast and a woman started talking about her experience of living with two uteruses. And I was like ‘damn, that’s me.’"
"Told the GP, she reluctantly sent me for the scans, told me it almost certainly wasn’t that given the rarity. But yep, turns out I have two uteruses, cervixes and vaginas, and one unit of a kidney instead of the factory-issue two." —u/HowAboutBiteMe
4. Science class saves diabetic student
"When I was in high school one of the science classes had to do a project on systemic diseases. This kid chose diabetes. They noticed the symptoms matched what they had been feeling lately. Went to the hospital and it turned out they were days to hours from a diabetic coma." —u/amurderofcrows
5. Yeast infection of the ear
"My younger brother dealt with persistent chronic ear infections and was supposedly diagnosed with eczema in his ears. They would often weep pus that smelled foul and he would swab them every day. They were red and flaky inside, which prompted the eczema diagnosis, but I don't think explained the pus?"
"So after 10 years of dealing with this, he gets fed up with it and decides to send off samples of his own for private testing so he could review every single bacteria that was present himself. Turns out the biggest colony was Candida." —u/xenogazer
6. Kidney cancer diagnosed from two symptoms
"Didn't have any dramatic symptoms other than poor appetite and fatigue. I knew I had something going on above my waist but not in my chest. Drs blew me off so I got a lung scan due to smoking history. Kidney cancer. Tumor was on the upper part and outside of the kidney. Small tumor, had a partial nephrectomy, 3rd post-surgery scan coming up." —u/dark_places
7. Stop misdiagnosing women with depression
"Way back when, after baby #2, I started gaining weight, felt like I had been run over by a truck (!), and couldn’t remember basic words like chair/table. I made an appt. with my OBGYN, ‘you’re depressed’ even though I denied feeling depressed, end of consult."
"A week or 2 later, I remembered I had a family history of low thyroid (not that it’s necessarily familial) and made another appointment—oh!! My heart rate was 28! No wonder my mentation was garbage!" —u/TJMcGJ
8. Maybe we should avoid dismissing ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome
"After an egg retrieval, I got myself to the ER and told them I definitely had a severe case of ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome. I thought it was a no-brainer. Boston IVF had warned me of what to look for and I had nearly every symptom, including the 'go immediately to the ER' ones."
"The ER doc kind of laughs and goes, 'Maybe we should avoid googling symptoms.' He recommended tylenol and was going to discharge me! It took me forever to convince them to just do imaging and check my ovaries—first time I’ve ever heard a doctor say, 'Holy sh*t, that can’t be right.'” —u/EvilAbed57
9. Multiple sclerosis is best treated sooner than later
"Went to the doctor and he asked in a condescending manner what 'Dr. Google' said I have. I said that my symptoms matched up with multiple sclerosis."
"Two years later I visit him and he has a resident following him around. She was the one that performed a test on me (Babinski reflex) that indicated neurological damage that led to my diagnosis of: multiple sclerosis." —u/WhyYesOtherBarry
10. Instagram saves baby from cholesostasis
"I followed a woman on IG who sold leggings (I was a yoga teacher). Over the years, she became pregnant and lost her child within 36 hours after birth with no real cause. ... She started feeling itchy on her hands, arms, and feet, and realized she had felt the same symptoms with her first pregnancy, but dismissed them."
"At 36 weeks, I started feeling itchy hands and feet. I lotioned, ignored it, but it kept getting worse. I kept thinking of the IG lady though, and I decided to go to my doctor. She thankfully said, lets test your liver just to check. Turns out I had cholesostasis of pregnancy, and likely saved my baby's life by not waiting." —u/saltandvinegar935
11. Ovarian torsion misdiagnosed by fatphobia
"Diagnosed myself with ovarian torsion last year. The pain was indescribable and couldn’t even keep down sips of water. Went to A&E. Medical staff tried to diagnose me with a kidney stone despite having no issue with peeing. Just saw I was fat and ignored my long standing PCOS diagnosis."
"Multiple ultrasounds showed no calculi, but moving the wand over to just above my uterus did show my left ovary had dislodged and was hanging out there, being strangled by a 9cm cyst." —u/CherryDoodles
12. Even pregnant nurses can't get pericarditis signs taken seriously
"I’m a nurse and correctly diagnosed myself with pericarditis after being sent home from the ER. I was pregnant and had sharp chest pain that those mfers brushed off as heartburn. Like a knife in my chest. I’m still irritated 25 years later." —u/AstridCrabapple
13. Sometimes hypochondriacs are right (about Crohn's disease)
"When I was 17, I had what I thought was a stomach bug for about 3 months, but it wasn't going away. I finally told my dad about it (he's an obsessive hypochondriac) and listed a couple of my symptoms."
"He grabbed the most recent version of the Merrick manual off the shelf (because he's a crazy obsessive hypochondriac) and flipped through the pages until he found a diagnosis that matched my symptoms. He legit said to me, 'well it's either an ulcer, Crohn's disease, or Ulcerative Colitis.' It was Crohn's disease. He found that out from a book, people." —u/Morning_Candy
14. Pulmonary embolisms are no joke
"I diagnosed my mother’s PEs (pulmonary embolisms). She’d had abdominal surgery the week prior and made an off the cuff remark about having to sleep upright as she was short of breath when lying down."
"That didn’t sit right with me so a quick google told me about how PEs can happen, especially after major abdo surgery. Told her to get to emerg, STAT—sure enough, 3 PEs. She’s fine now, thankfully, but she sure as hell could’ve had a stroke if she hadn’t have mentioned anything." —u/mad_morrigan
15. One of the original celiac diagnoses
"Not a medical professional, but one of my aunts was born in the 1930s and became a registered dietician. She self-diagnosed as having celiac's in the early 1960s, which was almost unheard of at that time." —u/stranger_to_stranger
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