"Don't Ignore These": 45 Symptoms People Swear Are More Serious Than They Seem

I was 25 weeks pregnant and noticed some watery discharge/ I was confused I might have been [urinating] myself a little. If you google "watery discharge while pregnant" google tells you its totally normal. I felt totally normal otherwise, no cramping, blood, or anything else unusual. I called my OB after about 12 hours of this, just to check in after my husband felt concern. I expected her to set up an appointment with me the next day, or go to urgent care in the morning, but she said to go to the ER immediately. Once I arrived at the ER I expected to wait for hours. But they admitted me immediately. Turns out my water had broken (I was expecting a huge gush like you see in the movies!) and I was having contractions 1 minute apart that I couldn't feel, and I was going into preterm labor. (something called PPROM)

At 25 weeks I was still in my second trimester, hadn't planned a baby shower, labor was something that felt a long way off... I hadn't even started prepping our nursery! I spent 46 days in the antepartum unit of the hospital on magnesium drips and trying to delay labor as much as possible, and ended up having my baby at 32 weeks. After my long hospital stay and some time he spent in the NICU, he's a happy and healthy 1-year-old now!

My great grandfather died from an untreated blister on his foot. Even when his leg turned colors and he couldn’t walk he refused to go to see a doctor. I tell people he died of toxic masculinity. Idiot.

My earache ended up being a heart attack! Women have different symptoms, so pay attention!

Acid reflux. I was diagnosed with a hiatus hernia about 20 yrs ago.im 54 you male. I was sitting after dinner,tilted my chair back and dozed off in front of the T.V. I woke up coughing and tasting reflux in the back of my throat. Leaning forward in my chair I coughed to the point of needing a deep breathe took a gasping breath and felt something was wrong . Ten minutes later it was getting harder and harder to take a big deep breath. My wife called an ambulance and when the doors on the ambulance closed I stopped breathing all together. 13 minutes and 42 seconds later we arrived at the hospital for resuscitation. From there I went into a medically induced coma for 10 days . Aspirated pneumonia. The gasp of air I took in my chair filled my lungs with stomach acid. The acid burned holes in my lungs and no oxygen to my brain.

Simple acid reflux k**led me. Literally. So be careful it don't take much to visit the other side. I was thankful I returned to my wife and two kids my wife would call the hospital three times a day. For 9 days, 27 calls of them telling her there's no improvements my family prepared for the worst. On the tenth day she got the call that I was awake and alive. Thanks for a place to tell my story.

Cold/flu like symptoms the day after a drowning scare. Especially in kids. It's the main symptom of leftover water in the lungs causing "Secondary drowning". Easily fatal if untreated.

Sudden change in vision.

In my case it turned out to be a brain tumor. I waited too long and now my vision loss is permanent. But I went early enough to still be alive.

Cat bites.
They can become infected super easily and be bad.
Not an "OMG you gonna die" but definitely take a trip soon to get any cat bites checked. Even if not deep.

I thought i had a mild UTI or a small kidney stone. Family and personal history of stones and I was in the middle of redoing my entire diet to prevent them better. Well turns out that wasnt the issue. I had an ovary do a little flip in there and get stuck. Now the cool part, there was a cyst encasing the ovary, gave it just enough blood flow to keep it from rotting while still inside me. It had been flipped for awhile, that cyst saved me from severe infection or worse. Not bragging but im told pathology was super stoked to see that. No clue why im proud of that.

I had an abscessed tooth at a time when I had no dental insurance (god bless America, no seriously, I mean like actually do it, please). It went away after a few days and I didn't think much of it other than that it just really sucked for a few days. Within the next few weeks my teeth just started painlessly falling out. I came up with the money to see a dentist again, they did the X-rays and found that the infection had k**led the roots to all of my teeth and that there was nothing that could be done at that point to save my teeth.

And that's the story of why I've had dentures since I was 28. Dentures suck, but having no teeth sucks a lot more. Implants are nice if you're a millionaire, but my full realistic-looking dentures cost about as much as one tooth would cost if I got implants.

I got a small cut, little more than a scratch, on my arm cleaning under a conveyor at work. The sort of thing one barely notices. It was black with coal dust, so I rinsed it off. I didn’t give it a good soap and water scrub until I got home several hours later.

A few days later I had a dark red bump with what looked like a pimple on it where the scratch had been. I figured it could be an infection, but there was no pain or discomfort so I figured it would heal. After a few days of it remaining the same, it suddenly grew larger and nastier looking. Still no pain or discomfort.

I figured I needed antibiotics, so I made an appointment with my doctor. It was going to be a few days. When talking to my mom, who is a nurse, on the phone she said it’s serious and if I can’t see the doctor that same day then I need to go to urgent care.

I went to urgent care and the nurse practitioner didn’t seem too worried. Then I rolled my sleeve all the way up and they saw red streaks going from the infected area up towards my arm pit. I was very surprised what happened next since I imagine people in urgent care see all sorts of bad stuff. They freaked out saying I needed to go to the emergency room immediately. They asked if I felt ok and could drive myself. When I said yes, they said they’d call the hospital and give them my info and let them know I’m coming. They said I may have to stay for a couple days on IV antibiotics because I had sepsis, an infection spreading through my blood stream.

I had to get lots of medicine, but only stayed in the hospital for one day. Apparently it was so serious because once the infection passes a certain threshold, people go from feeling fine like I did to deathly ill in minutes. Make sure to clean any cuts well right away.

I was at the gym doing kangaroo hops and I fell face first. My legs never moved with the rest of my body. My husband, the trainers, and owner of the gym all tried to tell me to relax and try again. I just looked at them saying "my legs aren't working." 


We all brushed it off as "weird". It only lasted 30 seconds in random moments throughout the session so maybe a total of 10 minutes off and on. 5 weeks go by, each work out session, my legs "stop working" for various activities. 


If I went to the hospital and got clear answers, I could have prevented a very serious onset of Functional Neurological Disorder that left me 9 months suffering from seizures everyday. Some days 30+ a day. They are non epileptic but you aren't in control of your body. I was trapped in side frozen in place, only able to blink for some days. 


I always wondered if I made the changes I needed to live with the disorder in those 5 weeks, would it have gotten so bad? I had to relearn how to walk, talk, and function without seizures taking over my body. 


It was rough. .

Headache and a neck so stiff that you're unable to look straight up.

Sign of meningitis (inflammation and swelling of the brain) that has gone so far that your brain is pressing down on the brainstem. Could be lethal within hours.

Hit your head hard? Get it checked out.

I had a friend who fell out of a chair at a work party and hit their head hard on the ground. They shook it off. Started complaining about vision problems over the next several weeks. Their work performance suffered. Then, between work and their wife, the people around them pieced together that they could no longer read at the same level. It wasn't their vision, it was their comprehension. They couldn't even perceive what was actually wrong.

Long story short, it was a serious TBI. They had to go on disability and into rehabilitation therapy for over a year.

Edit:
Man, a lot of folks are not seeing the forest for the trees. There are plenty of stories below of people who could have had surgery to save their life after a bleed (thank you for sharing, I am so sorry). Plenty of people that might have gotten other interventions or monitoring to intervene earlier to help.

Yes, there are s****y doctors out there that will not care about concussions or TBI (traumatic brain injury) risk. Health systems everywhere have them. There are also good doctors as well. Give yourself a chance.

Also, consider the importance of documentation. Some more details about my friend is that they had to go through the hell of claiming worker's comp (since it happened at a work event) and having several months of reduced duties. Since they didn't get checked out right away, it was tough to have a timeline. It was also difficult to get a proper referral to a TBI specialist clinic and physical therapy. Things worked out for them in the long run, thankfully, but documentation and a timeline of changes help immensely with disability claims. Disability can happen to anyone, including you. Document everything.

Also the people who care about my friend's gender are weird. I used they because they use they. Look at the 99.9999% of 3k upvotes that didn't care because it doesn't matter and is unrelated to the topic. Stop inserting your discomfort and hate into everything.

If you feel like your chest is tight and you vomit, go straight to the ER. These are common heart attack symptoms in women and often go unnoticed.

Sweet smelling breath! Could be diabetic ketoacidosis.

A migraine that's much more painful than usual. Apparently a stroke is not always accompanied by the other well known symptoms. I'm on blood thinners now.

Each of your pupils is a different size than the other.

It can signal a brain bleed, mini stroke, aneurysm, or other brain trauma.

Go now!!

Before I was admitted to the ICU for 2 weeks I had muscle tetany (felt like pins/needles) in my feet, arms, chest and weirdly enough what felt like my nose for weeks. Thought it was just poor circulation and turns out I had undetectable potassium and phosphate levels which did bad damage to my liver and kidneys!! I went months without going to the ER because I thought I was being dramatic. Literally never write things off as something else, it’s always better to look crazy than be dead. Also for those that are biologically female, losing your period or prolonged amenorrhea is oftentimes a sign of something larger going on thats attributed by doctors as stress. Always get it checked!!

Pain in one breast after lying on it and/or feeling a lump in the breast AS A MAN.


Breast cancer can and does happen for men. What's worse, doctors can be dismissive about it. Do not give up until it's checked through ultrasonography, even if you have to get a second or third opinion. 


Edit: Just realised that's not an ER kind of emergency, but leaving it up for awareness. The reason I posted it is, because it "seems to be harmless" if it happens to a man instead of a woman, but it's not. .

Being tired all the time (suddenly). Last year around the fall we noticed my dad getting tired really easily, needing to sit down when going for a walk, sleeping in way later than usual etc. He had gained some weight so we told him he should lose it cause it's obviously affecting him. Even our doctor told him he should really watch his health and eating habits if it's causing him discomfort. It got to a point where we got bloodtests done to see if he's pre-diabetic or something. Then they noticed he's got really bad anemia, and very very high iron levels, which is unusual. They sent him to the ER for an emergency blood transfusion, where he met with a hematologist who immediately told him it looks like his bone marrow basically stopped working.
After a week in the ER they diagnosed him with MDS (a form of bloodcancer) and his only way of survival was a stem cell transplant. He got very lucky that they found a 100% matching donor fairly quickly and he's seemingly recovering now.
Always go to the doctor:|.