37 Doctors Share Which Diseases Should Scare People More Than They Do

Not really a disease, but all mental health issues need more awareness.

Measles. Most people assume it is like the chickenpox and not dangerous to kids but measles kills. Plus we should have eradicated measles like polio ages ago but people won't vaccinate their kids. There was an outbreak new me in the past few months and I think there was 1 or 2 deaths. Vaccinate your kids people.

ER/ICU nurse here. What scares me most is any disease we have vaccines against but people refuse to get. Measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, varicella, HPV. All communicable diseases that are making a comeback thanks to antivax idiots.

Diabetes, heart problems, etc I can prevent through my own actions. Communicable diseases I can't.

First, I must go on a rant about people INSISTING that they use antibiotics for things that don't really need them; and when they do, not using it properly. You don't get an antibiotic only to stop it three days earlier than instructed to. You are literally helping bacteria to become resistant against that antibiotic.

To answer your question:

MRSA is pretty scary.

Depression. It will literally mess up every aspect of your life. And so many people have it without realising and wonder why their life is so bad and they take no pleasure from anything. So then they end themselves. Seriously lethal illness if not treated. Thankfully it's highly treatable with medication and if needed some therapy.

You should worry about any of the already present, very common, bacterial infections that are becoming resistant. The word the CDC is using to describe the consequences of gradually failing antibiotics is "catastrophic." Cuts and scrapes and sniffles we routinely minimize will, soon, once again be destroying us.

Nurse here. Clostridium difficile.

This is a bacteria that's infects your gut. It causes explosive diarrhea and ends 14000 Americans each year.

The bacteria can't be destroyed with normal sanitation solutions because it will turn into a spore which makes it last months at a time on surfaces. Hand-sanitizer doesn't get rid of it - you have to wash your hands. Our normal cleaning wipes don't get rid of it - you have to use bleach.

I take care of C-diff patients all the time - at least one a week. It's super common in hospitals and it is resistant to most antibiotics.

Lou Gehrig's Disease. It essentially shuts down your muscles and important organ systems over the course of 5 or so years. At the end, you have a functioning mind but you're trapped in a useless body. Many athletes and military veterans get diagnosed with it later in life, and we don't really know what causes it or how to prevent it. What's even more concerning is the fact that many more young people are being diagnosed and having their lives cut short.

Not a nurse or a doctor, but still sort of, kind of, relevant. Take your body seriously. In college my roommate got flesh eating disease. we believe she got it from tanning in a tanning bed that was not properly disinfected, but there's no way to be sure. It's clinical name was necrotizing fasciitis. One day she felt like she had pulled a muscle, later in that day her leg got red and eventually got a bit swollen. She complained of pain for 2 days and we all just contributed that to her being a drama queen and wanting attention.

Her mom, being a nurse, advised her to go to the hospital. They rushed her in for surgery to remove the rotten skin to avoid the infection spreading, though it did continue to spread. The doctor told her that if she waited another day, she would have lost her leg, and any longer than that and she could have passed. Over the 17 days she spent in the hospital, she had 7 surgeries and 2 skin grafts. her leg was really messed up.

Alzheimer's. People sometimes laugh it off but it scares me worse than cancer.

I feel like people don't take diabetes as seriously as they should. It's something that could cause you to lose one or multiple limbs, your eyesight or even your life.

Also, tooth decay. I've seen quite a lot of people in their 30s who neglected their teeth during their teenage years/young adulthood and required extensive dental work which isn't only super expensive, but also very stressful for the patient. Brushing your teeth twice a day is a very easy way of preventing that.

Prions. No cure...just have to waste away. How awful!

Lyme disease. My state doesn't recognize it but it is a real issue.

Stop freaking out and taking antibiotics for colds. Each and every one of us is the culmination of over a BILLION years of evolution, you can handle a cold!

Ebola. It's been in the news the past few days, but aside from that not much is said. Read The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. Scariest book I've ever read.

ICU RN weighing in here. Disease to fear: Infective Endocarditis.

You get a bloodstream infection as a result of anything from a puncture (dirty needle, rusty nail, etc) to a rotten tooth and these bacteria start forming these little vegetative leaflets on the back sides of your heart valves. They grow bigger and bigger and bigger until one day one breaks off and your cardiovascular system takes it away to become lodged somewhere. If its small enough and you're reaaaaaaly lucky, it will get stuck in your lungs and you'll just have a pulmonary embolism (from which you might die) or get stuck in your kidney (acute renal failure, have fun on dialysis). But you probably aren't that lucky so it will lodge itself in the brain (massive stroke calling, your times up!) or go straight to your heart (massive heart attack) and you're dead before you can clutch your chest.

Here's the really awful messed up part. If I see you go down and hit the floor from this, I'm going to immediately start CPR (unless I see some marker saying you're a DNR-CC). I'm going to start compressing your chest like its my job, squeezing your heart and pumping blood. But when I do this (unbeknownst to me) more of these leaflets are going to start breaking off and showering your organs with these little embolli that will get stuck in those tissues causing further damage. If you're lucky, you'll stay dead. If you're not, you'll have a short meaningless, tortured existence.

Why has Tuberculosis not been mentioned yet? It's a multiply medicine resistant, highly infectious, high mortality disease that is pandemic. It also tears through people with AIDS like crazy. I dread the day the sorts of TB arriving in the US from South America arrive in Europe.

Legionnaires disease.

Scary stuff - basically your air conditioner will end you.

Gonorrhoea, and the fact that it is becoming incredibly resistant to our current treatment options. And to make matters worse, we don't really have solid treatment options for when new strands are completely resistant to Ceftriaxone.

Heart disease! I work in a Cardiac ward of a Hospital. 40% of our patients are just really really really old. (85+). 50% are people between the ages of 40 and 60 who are obese or very overweight. Old people have heart problems because, they are old. 40-60 year olds only have heart problems because they are obese and lead unhealthy lifestyles. I would say almost all of these patients could have avoided their heart problems by watching their weight and walking for 30minutes a day.


For those who were wondering, the other 10% are legitimate, unavoidable stuff like 10 year olds with holes in their hearts or younger people having a pacemaker replaced.