“Could Be Chipotle. Could Be Cancer”: 30 Medics Share Seemingly Harmless Signs That Shouldn’t Be Overlooked

Oncologist reporting in.

That lump that doesnt go away. That cough that doesnt go away. That diarrhoea that doesnt go away. Basically anything new that doesnt at least start to get better over the next couple of weeks or months. Could be chipotle. Could be cancer.

Hopefully wont be seeing ya.

Sudden toothache in a 50+ female with good oral hygiene. Heart attacks present atypically in many women, often pain in the jaw or neck. (Paramedic here)

Not a Nurse, Dr, EMT or paramedic but I work for the fire service in the UK. If you start to feel dizzy, headaches or nausea and have gas appliances in the home (or open fires and log burners) GET OUT OF THE HOUSE AND CALL 999! Especially if any of these appliances are new, recently serviced or are being used for the first time in a while.

These are signs of a carbon monoxide leak. If you have pets that are acting weird as well this can also be a sign. Carbon monoxide is denser than air and will sit at a low level so opening windows WILL NOT CLEAR IT EFFECTIVELY. open your doors and all the doors on the ground floor and evacuate the building, including children! I DONT CARE IF ITS 3am and they have school in the morning (I have genuinely had a caller say this to me before).

Carbon monoxide is NOT to be messed with it is colourless, odourless and tasteless and It doesn't take much to kill you either!

Call the emergency services, we carry gas monitors and equipment to clear the property in the case there is a leak and can isolate the appliances/source of the leak. We will then organise for the gas board to come and fix the leak.

My advice; GET A F*****G CARBON MONOXIDE ALARM THEY AREN'T EXPENSIVE!!!! Hell get a few!

If you suspect a leak, get out. No matter the time of day. Call 999 and get the f**k out! We will be there in no time. We would rather you call us an it be a false alarm than someone die!

And lastly, if you have an open fire or a log burner. GET YOUR CHIMNEY SWEPT. AT LEAST ANNUALLY!! This will reduce the risk of a chimney blockage that could lead to carbon monoxide build up and will reduce the risk of chimney fires. Both of which kill people!

PLEASE TAKE THIS ON BOARD PEOPLE!! Please! I've had too many deaths due to Carbon Monoxide now. If you are a kid... MAKE YOUR PARENTS READ THIS!

Source: current 999 call handler for the fire service. I handle this stuff DAILY and have done a lot of extra curricular research on it!

I'm a mortician, and I can't tell you how many pick-ups I've done where someone shat blood, then decided to take a shower to clean up before getting help, and then died in the shower. If you s**t blood, call an ambulance.

I'm not a healthcare professional in any way, but my grandmother had a stroke last year. The signs were barely visible, and I almost did not take her to the hospital.

One side of her face was dropping ever so slightly... you couldn't really tell unless you looked at a previous photo of her. I called my mother to confirm what I was seeing... she saw nothing. I made phone calls to hospitals to ask what I should do. They told me to take her to the hospital if I was concerned.

Sure enough she had a stroke... a mild one, but the signs were so so subtle.

Period so heavy it soaks through a pads in less than an hour.

For some people this is sort of normal but if you are bleeding through everything GO TO THE HOSPITAL!

Physician here.

It's impossible to list everything so I like to keep it simple.

You know your body and how you feel. Any abrupt unusual changes should be checked out.

A few:

- Unequal parts: Draw an imaginary line down the middle and if anything is unusually unequal such as Pupils, facial droop/sagging, 1 sided weakness

- Sudden pain to light, especially with associating headache/neck pain or flashes of light

- Changes in sensation or communication, hearing, vision, slurring of speech, etc.

- Unusual shortness of breath

- Sudden and/or severe abdominal pain

- Unexplained weight loss

- Unusual bleeding

- Unusual swelling

- Sudden Confusion

When in doubt, get it checked out.

Skin or whites of your eyes are unusually yellow

In kids-teenagers mostly- constant peeing, constant drinking, cloudy eyesight and sweet fruity breath (when they haven't eaten anything to cause that) can be diabetes. Also, be on the lookout for breath that smells like nail polish. Could be ketoacidosis.

Slurring their words without being under the influence of an intoxicant. An uncle was slurring his words while speaking to my aunt. She thought he might have been tired and told him to rest, but her friend suggested that maybe he should go to a doctor. Turns out my uncle was having a stroke. If he had laid down to rest, he may have never woken up.

If you just had an extremely hard workout and your pee is brown/red.

Hospital. NOW.

This means your kidneys are failing.

Projectile vomiting. Nurse here. Also, sometimes you just f*****g know things are not right. Don't let anyone talk you out of that. Go. Get checked out. Dying is not worth it.

Pain in your leg without a cause that won't go away.

Many people have DVTs (blood clots in the distal veins) that break off and can travel throughout the circulatory system, and can cause a stroke if they block the brain circulation

If you strike your head hard and you suddenly start vomiting with no nausea. Along the same vein:

If a head injury occurs and the person is unconscious for any lenght of time, has one pupil larger than the other, isn't acting right, is hard to wake up...it would be time to call 911 and get to the emergency room.

Sudden changes in cognitive and/or behavior are a telltale sign of UTI on the elderly.

I've seen a few elderly patients in critical conditions whose symptoms were attributed to age/getting old.

If someone seems drunk, they could have a dangerously low blood sugar. On the other side, if someone is shaking, breathing heavy, and has an altered mental status they could have an extremely high blood sugar and could be going into DKA

If your flu like symptoms don't go away after a month or so, go to the doctor. Keep an eye out on kids too. My friends daughter (aged 1) at the time had a "chest infection" for about a month. Her mother took her to the doctors 3 times and they just written her off with a chest infection diagnosis and that it would heal within time. Trust your instincts because one day my friend knew something wasn't right and took her daughter to the hospital. Her blood oxygen levels where extremely low and she fell extremely poorly that night and almost passed away because of the stress of being in a hospital. She got transferred to a children's specialist hospital that night and was put in an induced coma. Her lungs where f****d, the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong for over a month (whilst she was still in a coma) then they eventually diagnosed her with a rare lung cancer. 3 years later the cancer won.

Obligatory "not any of these" but my mother is a nurse, and I had a horrifying experience because my stubborn father wouldn't tell her he wasn't feeling well.

Evidently, he'd begun having trouble breathing, felt light heated, sick to his stomach, and just generally not okay. My dad spent 25 years in the military and is the worst person when he's sick because he won't admit anything's wrong. If that man says the words "I think I should go to the hospital" he should've been on the way hours ago.

I come into the living room one day to find him unconscious on the floor in an awkward heep. I went into blank-brain panic mode and thought "hospital" and dragged him outside, to my car, got him in and buckled, and the tore out of there. Called my sis, who lived on the road to the hospital, and had her jump into the moving car.

By the time he'd been admitted, tests run, ventilator applied, and all that, he'd not only been diagnosed with pneumonia but also stage 2 kidney cancer.

Long story short, pay attention to your body. If you feel wrong, pushing it off will *not* make it go away, and you could get yourself killed. My dad nearly died that day, and all because he wouldn't speak up days earlier when he started feeling bad.

Kids get fevers all the time and feel sluggish. Not necessarily a big deal.

But if your child develops a fever and a RASH that won't blanch on pressing head to the emergency room ASAP. It could be meningococcal sepsis and is rapidly life threatening. If you are confused about whether it is non blanching just press over it with a drinking glass. Looking through the glass you should be able to tell pretty easily if the spots disappear on pressing or not.

* A red line traveling from the site of a wound (even if it's just a scratch) towards your heart. That's blood poisoning, and you need to get to a doctor ASAP for intense antibiotics.

* Frequently feeling very thirsty, and drinking excessive amounts of water without a clear cause (like exercise). It's often an early sign of untreated diabetes, as you will crave water to dilute the sugar buildup in your urine.

* For the ladies, having very irregular cycles or skipping periods without pregnancy. This can be caused by endocrine issues such as PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) or a pituitary growth like a prolactinoma. In the case of prolactinomas, this can be accompanied by swollen or leaking breasts. Neither will need you to rush to the hospital right away, but both should be tested for just in case (via a blood test). If you plan on getting pregnant, you might need medication to bring your cycles back to normal before it's possible to conceive. And if prolactinomas are left untreated, they can sometimes grow big enough to press on your optic nerve and harm your eyesight.

* A tick bite that is red, swollen, or has a rash developing around it (often in the typical "target" shape.) Many people have heard about the target rash, but any signs of redness or swelling around a tick bite are a reason to see a doctor and get antibiotics ASAP. You don't want lyme disease, it sucks. And can sometimes cause you to have a meat allergy!

* Intense abdominal pain can be appendicitis. It doesn't always appear in the traditional location of "lower right abdomen, around your belly button." In my mother's case, she felt it much higher, just below her ribs. The GI didn't diagnose it, and she waited a week before finally going into the hospital where a CT scan diagnosed it.