The Med School Hypochondriac

He has everything

[agent]

Same with getting a psychology degree. You open the DSM-5 for the first time and suddenly you're a depressed agoraphobic narcissist with factitious disorder

[jljordan]

Yes. Every single one, all the cancers. All the metabolic syndromes, and possibly even a prion disease or two.

[Psilocervine]

As a full-on actual hypochondriac, I got a MUCH needed laugh out of this

[khalilsabbagh]

The worst thing about this is when your brain is actually right about something being wrong, but your concern gets dismissed immediately by the doc when you tell them you're a medical student 💀🤣💔

[Ciborium]

There was a story about a first year med student learning she had Thyroid Cancer while learning about how to use an Ultrasound machine. The students were using an ultrasound on each other to examine the thyroid, but her thyroid looked different than everyone else's. Long story short, she had early stage Thyroid Cancer and didn't know it.

[lwlqebu]

The funny thing is- sometimes you’re right and the doctor will dismiss it as a student’s hyperactive imagination. I was reading about grave’s disease and I realized I fit most of the symptoms. As soon as my doctor found out I was a nursing student, totally dismissed the idea. Took 4 years to get the diagnosis.

[someperson]

Extremely relatable. Even to a non med student

[EmeraldSky]

"Nearly"

This is exactly like what having OCD is like 😆

[judithlashbrook]

I always wonder how many med students go the other way and, thinking that it's hypochondria, don't get checked out for something real...

[alptekinakturk]

Last one was the most dramatic one. ALS is like a sniper that hunts a couple of people every year in front of everyone and no one actually cares about it until you somehow get a persistent fasciculation. And you don't need big ultra tests with long periods of waiting to diagnose it, all you need is an EMG. My heart is so broken everytime I see that look on neurologist's face. Telling someone that he/she will probably gonna die horribly in a few years feels like unthinkable but that is commonly happening in neurology clinics in big cities. I was a second year med student when Ice Bucket Challenges were a thing and I sadly realized that people actually do not know how this disease kills people like a stray bullet. You can never be sure that you won't have ALS next year. Age, race, sex, lifestyle does not matter. No real treatment, no active cure and wonderful people dying while they are enjoying their lives. So sad.

[wcjerky]

"We're med students! Of course we're overthinking this!"
-Dr. Glaucomflecken

[DeermanDr]

Dont we love to diagnose ourselves with the most obscure things 😂

[macmedic]

The worst one must be ACCURATELY diagnosing something seriously wrong

[calliarcale]

Ah, Graves' Disease. My mom had that. First thing they try if you have that is drugs to tell your thyroid to lay off. Usually doesn't work, but they try that first anyway. It didn't work. Second thing they try is radioactive iodine to kill some of your thyroid off. Didn't work, so they did the next thing: more radioactive iodine to kill *all* of the thyroid off. That worked, which was good, because the next step is surgery to cut the bastard out.

She said the most surreal part was when she went to the hospital to receive her single dose of medicine. She was ushered into a room and then left there by herself. Then a pharmacy tech came in wearing a bunny suit and carrying a heavy cylinder. He unscrewed the cylinder, removed a pill bottle with tongs, and then gave my mother instructions to take the pill out once he'd left and swallow it, then tell everybody when she was done. Then he left her alone with what now seemed like an extremely dangerous pill. But of course this was mostly about reducing the hospital staff's occupational exposure to radiation, which she understood in her head, but

It did work. She has to take synthetic thyroid hormones for the rest of her life, but it did cure the Graves' Disease.

Oh, and fun fact: the first clue she got was from her optometrist, who noticed that her glaucoma test was showing much higher intraocular pressure than it had previously. So thank you very much, eye doctors of the world! 🙂 Her regular doctor was basically writing off her other symptoms as menopause.

[KyleRayner]

Never happened to me, but my love of sharing information I find cool led to my parents developing a lot of secondhand medical paranoia.

[Lanclasscan]

That is so spot on. ! Every disease I have studied as a Nurse I had in full force, but I am still here at 72 yo. !! ! 😂😂😂😂

[raisedincalifornia]

I think my leg just flinched…see you all on the other side 😭

[jordanabendroth]

Yep, learning about something immediately makes you think you have it.

[rosaleeziegler]

As a hypochondriac with obsessive health related anxiety, this gave me such a laugh but also validation.

[antrumkfpsalatschleuder]

I can relate as a biochemist… the medical microbiology course made me extremely paranoid about germs for a while ! 😂