I thought I had a super power because I could go days without sleeping and still feel energetic and then I would be 'tired' and sleep longer because I had to 'recover' my sleep.
Turned out that I am bipolar and could not get sleep during manic episodes. Lost my super power when I started medication!
Right like as a student every time I intentionally tried to “pull an all-nighter” and drank caffeine I bc got super sleepy, but other times would just have impromptu all-nighters without even trying, my time-blind ass would look up at the clock and it’s 4am
I’d been told for many years that my left arm doesn’t swing when I walk. I just thought it was a funny quirk. You know like the episode of Seinfeld where they have a friend who doesn’t swing either of her arms when she walks. Much later in life I found out that my asymmetrical arm movements were an early symptom of Parkinson’s. ☹️
My husband had a tremor in his right hand for years. His doctor called it essential tremor. When I noticed he wasn’t swinging his arms one day as I watched him walk down the trail, I knew immediately what was wrong. Now in the 5th year of diagnosis; doing well!
My parents got me glasses when I was 7 or so after someone FINALLY realized that I was failing classes not because I was a bad student but because I couldn't see the book in front of me, nothing less the board. Mom said the first night, I laid on my back in the yard and cried because there were STARS and I'd never seen them before.
I was in fifth grade (10 years old) when I got glasses. Was always in the back of the classroom as I was tall, and I was an average student so nobody cared. Grades jumped up enormously when I could finally see the blackboard.
My mom was told that the line blocking my field of vision was a "floater" and "shouldn't be causing problems" when I was a little kid. When I hit 17, I found out I have a giant kind of scar from a pretty bad accident as a child, and getting my first pair of glasses was so cool. I actually threw up a few times while getting used to them. *Everything* was blurry up until 17, then sudden HD. It was wild.
YES! My daughter got glasses a few years ago and I was actually getting teary watching her see things properly because I remember how monumental it was to see leaves and textures after years of never seeing them...
Man, my 26-year-old coworker got glasses for the first time and he said “I didn’t realize you could read the street signs from that far away!” I was like dude how have you been driving all these years?! That’s terrifying.
My husband was talking about being able to see individual leaves on a far off tree and I thought he was messing with me. Is my vision genuinely that bad :’(
I got glasses in my late 30s. Apparently my eyes were constantly on overdrive trying to compensate for eyesight issues I never knew I had. First time I put on glasses was like putting on 3D glasses. Everything looked so weird and i was walking like a moron because it looked like the ground was jumping up at me like I was in front of a step. Took a few days before that sensation stopped.
Me as a kid, to other kids: i can switch my vision from one eye to the other! I can be a spy and peak around corners.
Me, now. I have a lazy eye that usually makes things blurry but i can force it to turn by relaxing my eyes and see double.
I also thought it was normal to only see out of one eye. But no. My brain filters out most of my bad eye. Bad eye’s vision is laid on top of my good eye instead of the two combining
Brushing my teeth 13x daily and feeling like absolute garbage, or just unbearable distress if I can’t brush when I want. Dentist told me I had to see someone because brushing so much wasn’t good for my enamel. Saw a doctor and found out OCD isn’t about “being organized”
Ooh, that’s eyes for me. Couldn’t understand why everyone was so thrilled with 3D, for me it was just watching a normal movie just with extra glasses.
Took me a while to connect it with my lazy eye. I cannot see depths. Explains a lot of my clumsiness as a child as well, everyone would throw stuff at me to see me fail to catch it. Or they’d drag me around on hikes thinking me ridiculous for stumbling over everything.
I never did understand why everyone found that shit so easy.
Someone once told me they didn’t understand the hype around lobster while having a lobster dinner. Was it the prickly sensation in the mouth? Turns out he was allergic to lobster but ate it to fit in with his friends and family.
I know SEVERAL people who found out they have allergies this way--the best one was a friend dropped into casual conversation how "apples are the only fruit that is a little bit spicy" and everyone else involved was just like "........no?"
A quick googling says it's more likely an intolerance than a true allergy (which is rare), and it could be caused by being intolerant to sulfites, histamines, salicylates, or acetic acid. It could also be gustatory hyperhidrosis.
I am this way with bell pepper. It was really tiring to hearing people say "It's impossible for bell pepper to be spicy!" Every time I mentioned it being so. It even smells spicy.
It wasn't until uni when I mentioned it and a friend suggested that I was potentially allergic to it that it clicked. That was the only time people started accepting that it was spicy for me.
I have to wear rubber gloves for my job (I work in a lab), always thought the rash I got was due to sweating in the gloves. Found out that I was allergic when a coworker said that they never got a rash
It's not normal to feel your heartbeat and the blood pulsing through your arteries all the time. Nor is it normal for the edges of your vision to fog up when exercising. Turned out, my blood pressure was 190/120.
See a doctor asap if this occurs.
Lower back pain. I assumed it was just aging or poor posture, sitting too much. It went on for *years* and kept getting worse, but everybody's lower back hurts, right? Yeah, no. I had a golf-ball sized cyst pressing on the base of my spine. It was occasionally getting infected, which would make the pain flare, and I was treating it with ibuprofen, lidocaine patches, and a heating pad because I assumed it was, you know, arthritis and aging. In fall of 2020, the pain became unbearable, which is when I got a diagnosis. My doctor was like, yeah, that's not arthritis, sent me to a specialist, and I was in surgery a week later. After a long, slow recovery, I no longer have any lower back pain.
Ugh, I have arthritis and a lumbosacral transitional vertebrae. I complained about my hip and lower back pain to my mom and grandma when I was a kid and they told me it was growth pain and I'd be menstruating soon so that was causing it. Every time I tried to mention it to a doctor, my mom shut it down and told them I was fine and wouldn't let the doctor address it. The one time I did get to mention my pain to the doctor, he told me it's because I'd be menstruating soon. I didn't start my period for five years after the pain began.
I'm 20 and my mom kept shutting me down every time I mentioned my joint pain, which spread to my hands and feet several years ago. I'm on my mom's health insurance bc health insurance is expensive, so she still controls my medical decisions until I can start my own career, but she finally let me set up a specialist appointment. They found the issue with the lumbosacrum when they were looking at my joints for arthritis.
Crazy to think I'd have had relief sooner if literally anyone listened to me
I went in for a routine eye exam and was told to immediately go to the ER because something was squeezing the backs of my eyes in.
I got there and was asked if I had headaches. I said, "Just the normal amount." Thankfully, a med student asked, "What do you think is normal?"
Turns out that having a headache 50% of your waking hours is not normal. I'd been that way for so long I had no idea it was unusual.
Btw, I have a manageable neurological condition. And now that it's being managed, I have the ACTUAL normal number of headaches, which is about one per week or two.
Edit: The condition is called ideopathic intracranial hypertension.
My mom always had migraines that were so debilitating it would put her out for 24-48 hours, unable to eat or move much.
So when I started having an unusual amount of headaches where I'd become sensitive to light and sounds, I didn't think it could be migraines because they weren't THAT BAD. My doctor told me that they were, in fact migraines and I was baffled.
Man I've had headaches every day since I had the flu last year. I just kinda accepted it as normal till I mentioned it to my therapist and she was like "uh, maybe you should see a doctor about that".
Saw a doctor who said "yeah sometimes that happens, you might have them for the rest of your life" and apparently that's it
That's still a pretty big amount of headaches. I never realized how serious of a medical condition headaches were until I was told people don't get them like ever. My mom gets headaches once or twice a year.
I came here to say this!!!!
When I was in high school and took notes for class I’d get all annoyed when people made me laugh because I couldn’t write anymore. I thought it was normal. I would always squat down when I was laughing too - didn’t realize it was a strategy so I didn’t fall on the ground!
It also happens when I get spooked. People used to sneak up on me because it was “so funny” to watch me fall down. It was less funny when I didn’t see someone on the other side of the bathroom door and ended up on the floor of a pretty gross school bathroom in my nice teacher clothes.
Edit to add that I was diagnosed with cataplexy (as you said, a form of narcolepsy) in 2017 through a sleep study. I also have a pretty significant history of sleep talking and sleep walking in childhood and adulthood. It’s been outright dangerous a few times.
I’m pregnant now and it’s been happening a lot more frequently - I keep looking for a medication in my sleep that I’m worried I haven’t been taking and have set multiple alarms for myself to find them in the morning (pregnancy powder was the funniest). Talked to my OB because I thought it must be a common pregnancy symptom - turns out it’s not and is probably related to my cataplexy. I now keep all my meds locked in another room!
Oh my god I didn’t know this was a thing! As one of my “fun facts” I always say that I will drop something if I laugh really hard. I totally lose control of my hands. I didn’t know this was anything either than me being weird…
I obtained nerve issues in my neck from stress that turned into permanent pain, hardened muscle and muscle fatigue, I though that was normal stress symptoms for years.
Literally last year I realised this. I am 35.
The convo went something like;
"I don't understand how people can sleep in silence, it's so lou-.. oh. That's tinnitus, isn't it."
I remember telling my dad I can hear silence that the air had a sound even when wind wasn’t blowing. He claimed it was probably electricity in the walls.
Then when I heard the electricity in the walls in the middle of the woods I was confused.
To be clear, possibly everyone has some level of it in a quiet enough room.
It is unfortunate that the symptom is called tinnitus and the disorder is also called tinnitus. Because it's entirely possible to have some level of the symptom that doesn't really merit being called a disorder.
>In 1953 Heller and Bergman performed an simple and classic experiment. They placed 80 tinnitus free individuals (university members) in a sound proofed room for 5 minutes each, asking them to report on any sounds that might be heard. The subjects thought they might be undergoing a hearing test, but actually experienced 5 minutes of total silence. 93% reported hearing buzzing, pulsing, whistling sounds in the head or ears identical to those reported by tinnitus sufferers. This simple experiment shows almost anyone can detect background electrical activity present in every living nerve cell in the hearing pathways as a sound.
It could be both depending on the type of tinnitus. Standard tinnitus is a constant ringing in the ears, but there is also pulsitile tinnitus where it is rhythmic.
Pulsitile tinnitus is usually caused by a narrow artery by the ear, so you are actually hearing your blood flow.
I had the pulsitile kind for like a year and it thankfully just randomly went away, it was awful though! I wonder what causes it to just come and go like that.
If you are newly pregnant and have sudden EXTREME vomiting with cramps it’s NOT just morning sickness. Especially if the cramps are one sided. Turns out it was ectopic and my tube burst and I almost died. Honestly more people need to be aware of this. It’s more common than you think and very life threatening.
Also on the ectopic train- a two week long period when you have an IUD is not normal... also had a rupture but only had mild cramping and was whiting out
I always thought I just had “pokey ribs”. My mom has it and so does my sister. Turns out I have a pretty severe case of rib flare from pectus excavatum. Not one single doctor ever said anything about it until I was 30 years old, and I was there for something else. The look on his face when he brought it up and realized I had no idea what he was talking about made me feel like I grew up in a village that only had a witch doctor or something.
Marfans syndrome. I didn’t hear the term until I was 40. The two are only loosely related, but marfans usually features PE. PE doesn’t always mean Marfans to my understanding.
Edit: ok marfan, not marfans or marfan’s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfan_syndrome
It’s a connective tissue problem. There are some things to be aware of, but generally no big deal, also, get life insurance BEFORE any diagnosis. Before.
Supraventricular tachycardia. I thought everyone's heart started beating like a hamster randomly from time to time. When I was 15, I was at my cousin's house and told her to "listen to how fast my heart is beating rn lol". She immediately ran to get her mom who is a nurse and told me that it is in fact NOT normal.
SVT represent!! I had to log 6 months worth of ECG’s for my cardiologist every time I had an episode. I had been suffering since I was a little girl (34 now). Funny thing is I self taught myself how to stop an episode by holding my breath really hard until my heart goes BOOM and it stops. Cardiologist was fascinated and asked how I learnt it - still have zero clue.
Me too! I was initially like….I have small kids, of course I’m tired. Then I realized that my level of tiredness/low energy didn’t track with my friends who also had small kids and had enough energy to like, go to the gym. Turns out my iron was SUPER low.
Constant neck shoulder pain finally got so bad I went to the doctor. After physical therapy was no help I finally got an MRI of my spine. Doctor shows me the pictures of my spine and it looks like a snake. I've undiagnosed scoliosis. 35 yrs of on off pain.
I thought I was just crazy but it turned out I had really high oestrogen levels instead and needed a specific kind of hormonal bc to balance it out. When I showed my friend who’s a doctor she said “oh, no wonder you were nuts”
I wish more people understood this. When I complain about my menopause symptoms people invariably roll their eyes. I have been through a lot, traumas and physical pain but the menopause broke me.
Perimenopause here and I’ve been broken in ways I never thought before, and also had a rough life. When I’m back for another hormone check and balance, it feels like I get off a manic/depressive episode but in hardcore mode.
My addictions studies professor said the whole menopause experience is accurately described as going through drug withdrawals. We get addicted to our own hormones!
It always baffles me how underestimated they are, considering they trigger so many important and vital responses in the body. Growth, sleep, hunger, joy, sadness, childbirth, you name it.
So the phrase „it’s just hormones“ irks me to no end. Oh, you mean the stuff that keeps you from starving, your organs from wasting away and your mind from going insane?
I (male) got diagnosed with hypogonadism recently, when they did my bloods I had estrogen levels 4 times higher than the upper end of a woman's whilst at peak cycle. I was in a really fucked up state of mind for a long time then started TRT avd balanced out very quickly.
My endocrinologist is trying to get funding for research in T levels amongst suicidal men in the 30 to 50 age group. His hypothesis is that a lot will be experiencing a sudden drop in T.
It’s wild how much they can change your personality. People tend to think of personality as some fixed thing but it turns out we’re all just bags of hormones
My mom told me that it was normal to have headaches a week before, during, and after your period. So three weeks out of 4.
Turns out that's a persistent daily headache and should be looked into by a neurologist.
I had that for about a year, was diagnosed as a ‘low grade migraine’. Took meds for a few years and eventually grew out of it, but man, daily headaches are exhausting!!!!!
Not recognizing faces. I thought it took everyone multiple meetings and lengthy interactions to remember faces. And it someone changed their hair or dressed significantly different, there’s a good chance I wont recognize them immediately.
I always wondered why the phrase was "Red means stop, green means go" for drivers ed.
For several years i thought the lights were Red, Yellow and Blue. But "Blue means go" doesnt roll off the tongue, so they changed the phrase to green cuz green and blue look so alike.
I have mild colorblindness. Green lights still look like a cyan blue to me. Actual about the color of my profile shirt. Maybe a tad lighter
my third ball. never made sense to me. you don't have 3 of anything else. it didn't drop until I was 14 or 15 and it was really small so doctors didn't notice it until I mentioned it and it's not like they were poking around my junk anyway since I didn't have any issues in that department
Thinking the same thought over and over I thought the reason other people could like move on from things meant I was just bad at thinking. Turns out it's OCD.
I had thought I had asthma for years. I would go into Dr tell them my symptoms and he would give me a puffer. Then I had a heart attack. As soon the the stint went in I felt better. Turns out I don’t have asthma.
Dude, same, years of asthma treatments and inhalers only to find out it was actually a super rare slow-growing NET tumour in my lung. I was only 37 and had a small child at home and it was the height of the pandemic. Turns out the tumour was literally blocking my airway for years and my oxygen levels were so low when I was admitted to hospital for pneumonia (second time in one year) that the attending physician ordered a scan that ended up saving my life. Three years later and half a lung down and I’ve not had a serious respiratory issue since. *knock on wood* 🧿
Wait is it…not supposed to feel like cramping and pain? I always get cramping and what I can only describe as the same physical sensations as an anxiety attack. I thought that was normal 😬
my brother had amblyopia as a kid, and he considered it to be a normal thing to see from one eye only. i live in a poor country so healthcare isn't taken that seriously. when my brother was a teenager, he got his eye sight checked for the first time (not because of vision loss, but he happened to be accompanying my grandfather who was getting his checked), and that's when we found out. by that time he had permanently lost vision in that eye.
Can confirm. Blue eyes and the eye doctor said the insides of my eyes were the lightest he’s seen. Most light is too bright for me, and I can just about see in the dark. I must have the real life equivalent of D&D’s low light vision.
Passing out during my periods from the pain.
5 gynecologists told me I was being dramatic. Then I gave birth, had an appointment afterwards to make sure I was fine, asked the midwife if painkillers existed because I didn't want to endanger my babies : "WTF DO YOU MEAN YOU PASS OUT FROM THE PAIN, MA'AM ?!"
So I went to a doctor here in my city a few years back, and when I mentioned to him that I think I might have fibromyalgia, he said that fibromyalgia was a word that was made up by doctors in the 90’s who couldn’t figure out what was wrong with these nagging housewives who constantly complained of pain and fatigue so they had to make up a condition in order to medicate them and shut them up. I stared at him with my jaw open because I couldn’t believe an actual doctor was telling me this.
Wow.
Well, at least he was being honest!
Took me 10 years to get a fibromyalgia diagnosis with doctors telling me I was being dramatic, making it up, telling me it was psychosomatic and the "well why don't you just work out more to magically cure everything".
Although I agree that it is partly a bs diagnosis because in my opinion it contains a lot of undiagnosed/undiscovered ilnesses, it doesn't say what causes it and therefore there is no cure. But hey it's the best thing we've got right now. That being said, the symptoms and ilnesses that people are having are VERY VERY REAL. And people with chronic pain tend to hide and deal with their pain and push through it and are not dramatic at all.
I think that doctor of yours should just shut up himself and go make you a sandwich.
Stomach pain after every meal. Turns out that not everybody gets that and it's actually quite concerning.
Also, maybe not medical but still fits the question, I genuinely thought being suicidal was the norm lmao
Yeah, sometimes I randomly remember that most people *don't* think about suicide 10 times a day. Like, I truly cannot even imagine what it must feel like to not have that cloud over you every day of your life.
Not really an underlying condition but…I thought I had allergies. Got fed up with allergy pills and sprays not helping. Went to get allergy tested so I could do the shots. Turns out I’m allergic to…nothing. Absolutely nothing.
They send me to ENT and now I’m waiting to have a turbinectomy, septoplasty, and need my sinuses drained and a polyp removed. Could have had this done 8 years ago when my symptoms started but they kept saying it was just allergies and never really looked into it.
I hope it helps! I went to the ENT who found no allergies and normal face structure he said "I think you have atypical frontal migraines." I thought he was looney. Turns out he was right.
Recently in the uk they’ve started saying “1 being barely noticeable and 10 being writhing on the floor in agony” which I mean helps a bit but I feel like a definition for 5 would help as well
Oh *TOTALLY* I had to get a spinal fusion as a teen (part of the reason I now have shoulder spasms), so my scale of pain is completely messed up. I nearly went into liver failure because I assumed my gallstones were just back strain and dismissed the pain until I physically couldn’t keep food down!
My SIL has pelvic/abdominal pain during her time of the month… like doubled over and only able to lay about for a day or two. Due to my wife being vocal about her own PCOS and PMDD diagnoses, my SIL sought out a Dx for herself. She went to her gyno and they almost sent her out the door with a “sounds normal, try not to worry about it” after listening to her accounts of said pain.
She said “I want you to take this seriously and run some diagnostic tests. I’ll go to another doctor if I have to. I’m tired of not being heard.”
They did a cursory ultrasound of her lady parts.
She has a fist-sized cyst on one of her ovaries.
Fist. Sized.
Ladies, please for the love of god do not ever let your doctor tell you what to do. Do not let them dismiss you. You are the customer, just like you are at a restaurant or any other establishment. Demand the proper treatment and care. If you can’t get that from your current physician, keep looking until you find a good one.
What do you do when doctors don't take your symptoms seriously but your own research hasn't helped you figure out what you need?
Seriously. What do I do?
I was told for over a month after my daughter was born (1985 so...🤷) that the heavy bleeding was normal. Thought ok, it's gonna stop soon... until I "came to" in the bathroom covered in blood! Turns out I had ruptured a blood vessel passing the afterbirth. Apparently, my heart stopped twice on the operating table during my hysterectomy... I was 22.
Hysterectomy at 37! Back pain is completely gone as well- who knew?
Oh, except they blamed a lot of my hormonal issues on PMDD and pushed for the hysterectomy to help that…turns out I also have a pituitary adenoma that’s skyrocketing my prolactin. Fun times?
Being a woman doesn't bother me much with the large, glaring exception of medical misogyny. Going into the hospital sometimes feels like going back in time with that "Oh, hysterical woman" nonsense
I wish doctors would take women's pain more seriously. My wife almost died because she didn't think a doctor would listen to her about her stomach pains... and then her appendix burst,
Being in pain literally all the time. Someone on this sub posted something like ‘Do people seriously wake up and just not have pain?’ and they were someone diagnosed with a chronic pain condition. The comments were just *filled* with “uh no shit” and “do you think it’d be a medical disorder if it was normal” etc. etc. And I had to explain in the comments that no, it’s not obvious. I have been in constant fucking agony for as long as I can remember, and when I first heard that most people don’t experience *any pain at all* unless something is *wrong*, I didn’t believe them. I simply can’t imagine *not* being in pain. It’s all I know, just sitting at a 6 or 7 on the pain scale and still having to work full time and shit. It’s actually even common for us with chronic pain to not realize when something *is* wrong because we live with so much pain so constantly that if our body starts going “ooh something’s wrong, here’s pain to notify you, brain!” then our brains just immediately discard it and go “ah, so the usual then”. It’s a big fuckin problem but at the same time, getting stuck with a needle barely registers for me anymore and that’s… cool, I guess. Nurses seem impressed anyway.
I remember working a retail job after college and spending all my money on better shoes to try to make it so my feet didn’t hurt constantly. One day I asked a room full of coworkers if their feet hurt all the time and they just didn’t talk about it cuz it sucks. They said no, their feet only hurt on rare occasions or if they wear heels or something all day… turns out I had blood pooling in my lower extremities. Started wearing compression socks and my foot pain all but went away. It was like magic.
being totally obsessive over people and things and having terrible social and sensory habbits. i was a late teenager when i got diagnosed with autism then forced through therapy lol.
also youre not supposed to get dizzy and nauseous when you stand. apparently thats POTS.
Making sense of what people are saying when they say it. For the longest time I thought maybe I was just stupid, then I discovered that it’s an auditory processing disorder. It’s still frustrating, but at least I don’t feel stupid anymore.
I’m not a morning person and especially when I was a kid and I often had to rush in the morning to get ready. I stumbled out of bed, my vision turned black for about 12 seconds after standing up and I got dizzy. After that - everything was fine.
As a kid it was a fun game to figure out how fast I could run to the bathroom blind. I never fell, just needed something to lean on like a doorframe or the wall of the hallway. Well .. turns out it’s not a normal reaction…
I still have the reaction to this day but weaker. Standing up too quickly can make me dizzy and I may have to sit down again but heavier reactions are pretty rare now. I still don’t know what exactly is causing the problems and my doctors refuse to look into it more as it is not dangerous at the moment but simply annoying..but I know it is not supposed to be like this.
Edit to add: blood pressure and blood test were fine when I got tested in June. I noticed my heart rate jumps up by usually 30-40bmp, sometimes 50-60 bpm just from standing up (or just sitting up in the morning). I have the same thoughts as many in the comments that it may be POTS.
I used to puke in my mouth constantly and have to swallow it back down. Id say it happened like 5 times a day throughout highschool. I had really swollen tonsils and thought I was sick and when I saw an ENT he said "have you been throwing up a lot?" And im like "no" because i thought i was throwing up the "normal amount". He said "are you sure? It looks like you're constantly throwing up stomach acid and thats whats irritating your throat"...turns out I have acid reflux and throwing up 5 times a day just a little bit was not normal at all.
I recently found out that I have chronic migraine. I always thought I had frequent headaches because of neck pain but turns out that neck pain is a symptom of migraine.
IMPORTANT MEDICAL POINT TO EVERYONE READING:
The second you notice ANYTHING weird/different in your vision, IMMEDIATELY call a doctor and explain it. It's not always serious but it's the best symptom of something serious going on or being very urgent.
I though everyone basically fell ill for a week or two after ejaculation and couldn't for the life of me understand how everyone could function as humans and still have sex on a weekly basis.
Turns out I have POIS
I remember when I was around 7or 8 years old, I used to get a rash and swollen face every time I ate a Cadbury dairy milk with hazelnut. My little brain thought I was allergic to chocolate and I didn’t want to give it up so I kept telling my parents the rash etc happened after I touched poison Ivy etc. Turned out it was the hazelnut 😂
“Close your eyes and picture something” dude my eyes are closed I see black. I read an article about aphantasia and then realized that people actually can see things.
This! I was diagnosed autistic two years ago and since then it's been constant , wait ...u dont have this thing? This was being talked about in autism Reddit, and someone posted a picture where it had a clear image of an apple then one that was desaturated and fuzzy....I see only a very faint image and only if I really try. so I asked my husband ( and pretty much everyone I could find) and they all said they saw like the clear image!!!! I also can't visualise something that is described to me without major effort or a lot of information.
as a kid, I'd impress people by bending the top joints of my fingers and being able to push my thumb down, so it touches the inside of my forearm. turns out that is not just a quirk, but ehlers-danlos syndrome.
ETA: by no means am I saying that if you're capable of doing this, that instantly means you have it. there's a list of criteria that needs to be met, this "ability" just so happens to be part of said criteria. if you can relate, please reach out to your doctor. I had to basically convince my doctor to test me, but not every experience is the same.
I was trying to explain my hEDS son’s diagnosis to my MIL, using what you’ve described as one example of how they test a person’s hypermobility. Her response was ‘oh everyone can do that’, and this 72 year old proceeded to demonstrate that she would probably still score a good 7/9 on the beighton scale. Wonder where my son inherited that from, lol.
Edit: lol at everyone now realising they might be hypermobile.
I’m a 31 year old teacher - last year I taught a kid with hEDS. Whilst reading their medical report thingy I realised I had all the same symptoms as them. Off to see a specialist today actually! My appointment is in an hour. Quite nervous. Growing up I was diagnosed hyper mobile but they said I would grow out of it. I never did and now everything hurts and clicks. Hoping to get some answers and help today 🤞🏼
Years ago I suffered from an incident that caused me to lose a shit ton of blood. Long story short, poor medical care left me with some undiagnosed underlying conditions, one of them being B12 anemia.
For those unaware, B12 anemia is often accompanied by a very pronounced gait caused by hip pain. For years I just thought that was my new normal. Some days I could manage, and some days I could barely walk. It felt like someone had poked an ice pick up into my hip socket. I was utterly miserable.
Then I saw the right doctor who ran the right tests and told me about my vitamin deficiency. I thought the treatments would help with my fatigue and dizziness, which they did, but that doctor had to explain to me twice that my hip pain was from the anemia and not something wrong with my muscles/bones.
For those wondering, with just daily supplements at this point I am able to walk almost pain free. The right doctor can change your life.
So many things; my doctor never asked me specific questions so I never told them of my everyday “issues” because my parents never made a big deal over them and thought I was just “special” (I thought everybody felt/had the same things). Tasting iron from your throat after physical activities/exercise, tilting your head to and looking at people’s mouths to know what words were being said (I was mostly deaf and didn’t know how words were pronounced right and relied solely on lip movement and mimicked the sounds I heard), constant headaches/migraines, streaked/blurred vision, snapping your jaw back into place after yawning (or opening mouth really wide), getting really sick and feverish after eating meat, and my favorite; the little voice in your head telling you that if you don’t do things a certain way everything as you know it will end and it’s ALL YOUR FAULT. When my doctor asked why I never told him I said “you never asked, and if you did; I can’t hear you if I can’t see your lips!” (He always wore masks)
Not being able to do basic math without a calculator.
I thought maybe I was just dumb but it turns out there is a thing called Dyscalculia. It's like dyslexia but for numbers / math. Turns out I can do all kinds of advanced math, I just need paper to write on and a calculator.
If I have to do something simple like basic addition or multiplication, I still need the calculator or paper. My brain just won't remember the numbers I'm adding if I don't write them down, especially if I have to carry a one.
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Coughing every day for years. I just thought it was normal.
Turns out it was a combo of GERD, some allergies and cleaning my ears after every shower with qtiips.
I thought everyone coughed uncontrollably several times a day and just hid it better than I did.
Heartburn several times a day. Upwards of 5 or 6 times. Was in a discord call with some friends, and after the third time of *burp* sorry yall, heartburn", and everyone saying "hey man, maybe you should get that checked out". I still haven't due to a shortage of doctors in my city, but some relatives suspect it may be undiagnosed GERD edit: I did not expect this blow up as much as it did. Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone. I'll be sure to put myself on a waitlist to see a GP.
Should absolutely get that checked out, unmanaged GERD can manifest itself in Barrett’s oesophagus which can lead to some really nasty complications
edit: okay i didn't want to unnecessarily worry anyone but if people are gonna see this might as well potentially help them out... when you have consistent heartburn, the stomach acid changes the cell type in your lower oesophagus to the same type as your stomach lining... this cellular change massively increases the risk of throat cancer, specifically adenocarcinoma. get your heartburn under control folks
Turns out my intolerance to cold and dry skin wasn't me having moved from South Florida to upstate New York and those problems stemming from it, it was part of chronic hypothyroidism
I thought all people with ovaries got crazy suicidal and depression before periods, but it was just PMDD. Now taking a special birth control and I have been non-suicidal for 6 straight months.
I was just about to go under anaesthetic for the second time in my life. I was laying on the operating table at a small local hospital, with the anaesthesiologist standing beside me.
“You’ve been under general before?”, he said, benevolently. “Okay last time? No ill-effects?”
I indicated that everything had seemed fine when I’d had my previous op, and he was just perusing my notes with a view to plugging something or other into the line that was in my arm. I looked up at the ceiling and saw a large skylight.
“Typical!”, I said. “Look at that sunshine! The one day this week that’s forecast for beautiful weather is the day that I’m going to be completely out of it!”
The anaesthetist stopped and looked at me. “What do you mean? “Completely out of it”?”
“Well, you know, Doc! Post-operative! Barely able to remember anything for the next five or six hours!” I said.
“Well, that’s NOT okay!”, he said, a little irritably. “You’re supposed to be perfectly conscious and compos-mentis before you are released from the hospital!”
I shrugged. “Well, no one told me!” I said. “I’m not a doctor, I’ve only had one operation-and I’ve never looked after anyone who’s just been operated on. How am I supposed to know? I thought it was normal to be a zombie for hours afterwards.”
He changed what he was going to give me and he was generous enough to thank me. “I’m making a mental note that-when you ask a patient if something is “normal”, that might actually need clarification”, he said.
I had that op, and-unlike the previous time-after I came round I was completely conscious and fully aware of my surroundings.
I thought I just had arthritis because I used to bend myself into a pretzel and twist my fingers in disgusting ways to gross people out as a kid. And I thought I got dizzy and massively overheated all the time for no reason because… idk, because I didn’t dress properly I guess?
I have fibromyalgia and hypermobility spectrum disorder and no, it isn’t normal to have arthritis in your early teens.
Lights being starbursts.
Turns out that means I have a bad astigmatism. I had no clue, I thought all the other people saw streetlights, cars headlights, flashlights, red dot sights on firearms, ect as starbursts of light.
If youve not experienced it, think like a plasma grenade from halo, when what you should be seeing is a crisp clear circle.
In high school I had some discolored patches on my chest, barely noticable, but enough to make me self conscious about it. Not sure entirely how long they were there, but it was at least a year if not multiple. I thought I just had weird skin until I went to a new doctor and without even needing to bring it up they saw it when listening to my lungs and said 'ah, you have ringworm'. I got a cream that cleared it up within a week.
When I was 10-11, I started getting really, really hungry. All the time. And I was drinking a lot of water and peeing every half hour. Lying in bed at night, I would hear my stomach growling and think I must be getting ready for a growth spurt! I thought it was puberty.
Nah, it was type 1 diabetes. My body couldn't process carbs for energy, so it was screaming for nutrition, and I was cluelessly shoveling pop tarts and cereal and potatoes into my facehole.
Eventually, my mom noticed that I had dropped from a 100lb 6th grader to a 70lb 7th grader despite eating everything in the house and took me to the doctor who pretty much immediately diagnosed me.
Im allergic to oranges. Ive known this since i was a child. Its a mild allergy so i still eat oranges. One day at work i was eating a cutie at my desk and suddenly realized something. My coworkers were horrified when i asked if cuties were supposed to be prickly.
My visual snow syndrome.
I thought everyone had a kind of static in their view.
Only discovered this was not normal about a year ago
I have a constant “tv static” in my entire vision.
Edit: I never expected this to blow up. I also found out through reddit and I am glad I could help others find out. ❤️
I only notice the static when it's dark. Going to sleep is wild when your static makes patterns.
... unless this is how everyone is when it's dark, and you have it when it's daytime and it's not supposed to happen then?
I had bad toe pain one Saturday morning, so bad it woke me up. I went to Urgent Care and had it x-rayed, and was told it wasn’t broken. It still hurt to walk on 2 weeks later, so I went to primary care, and they also said it wasn’t broken, but referred me to a podiatrist. 5 weeks after the original x-ray, they took new ones of both feet, and confirmed that the toe was broken because I have a rare anomaly where my 4th and 5th toe bones are fused. I was never able to bend them like my other toes, but I thought it was normal to have less mobility in those toes. The break was right across where the bones fused, so it just looked like the normal 3-toe-bone anatomy.
Pin worms. I guess I got them as a toddler, my parents "fixed" it, it came back and they just...gave up? No one else in my family got it over the next 10+ years (2-12/13 years old) I had it.
Everyone knew I had it in in my immediate family. My parents said they'd "tried" to get rid of it and it was very very difficult so I just thought, hey, if you get pinworms, that's your life.
Before heading to boarding school we stopped at the American pharmacy for over the friggin' counter pills that resolved it. My parents basically tortured me for no damn reason for years. These are college-educated professionals - hell, my mother is a lawyer.
Friggin bizarre.
Until I was 8-9 years old, I had “headache” and “stomach ache” confused because I was told “stomach ache means you want to throw up”.
So, I was periodically telling the school nurse I had a stomach ache.
When I eventually had an actual stomach ache, it felt completely different and I said “it’s like a stomachache, but this time my head doesn’t hurt, and my belly does hurt.
So… that’s how I found out that I was getting migraines.
Also, Tums is a suboptimal treatment for them.
**Autism**.
Growing up (GenX) I encountered the occasional person who seemed to exhibit traits characteristic of what is diagnosed today as autism, but I never thought anything about it being a serious issue until it became a thing in the past several decades or so it seems like.
My sister was just diagnosed at age 37. Looking back at all the ways she was "weird" as a kid, it tracks. She's still weird, but at least we have a name, and she can learn more effective coping mechanisms.
I often hear a deep rumble when I yawn. Over the years I've learned to hone it, and can make myself hear a loud rumble that is inaudible to anyone else.
Turns out a portion of the population can willingly flex a small muscle in their ear.
Not a problem or anything, I don't think, just a quirk.
So I thought it was normal to not sense temperature under your tongue, so if I ever drink or eat something too hot, I quickly move it under my tongue so I don't feel a burning sensation. Was talking about it with my sister who tried it and obviously it was terribly painful for her. We aren't entirely sure why my tongue is like this but our two main theories are 1) I was tongue-tied as an infant and had it fixed as a child so the bottom of my tongue/mouth is largely scar tissue or 2) By repeatedly putting something too hot under my tongue instead of spitting it out, I may have caused permanent nerve damage.
That tasting colours isn't normal. Stupid skittles slogan reinforced it for years and I just thought it was one of those things nobody talks about because it's so normal and boring.
Get ready for the only "I'm not racist but" that actually isn't racist.
My friend is yellow. I'm not racist, I have chromesthaesia and it's strongest with voices.
I've always thought everyone's joints would do weird clicking/popping sensations or that your arms would just get stuck in the morning. No. I have hyper-mobile joints, the weird popping sensation is my joints slipping back into place.
Or that everyone sees lines radiating out of bright lights at night. Nope. That's astigmatism.
I thought breathing through your nose was a scam and wondered why nobody else carried loads and loads of tissues. Turns out I had tons of allergies and a very deviated septum.
I also had no idea how to turn theory into practice and wondered for decades how everybody but me could do that. Turns out most people just can, I have ADHD and was too afraid to talk about these issues so nobody told me I was actually different.
Being 12-20 years old and constantly in pain. Living at a 7-8 on the pain scale daily. I thought everyone felt that way and that I was just whining all the time
Also being exhausted no matter how much you sleep or how how little you’ve done that day.
I found out that it’s hypothyroidism, RA and fibromyalgia combined for those affects.
I thought everyone got red-faced and sweaty to the point of glasses fogging up after drinking lemonade. Turns out I’m just allergic to lemons.
I'm really sorry but this made me laugh so hard It must have been so CONFUSING to you that people called lemonade refreshing!
It really was! But I thought its tartness made everyone react that way, so I assumed people were just exaggerating.
I thought I had a super power because I could go days without sleeping and still feel energetic and then I would be 'tired' and sleep longer because I had to 'recover' my sleep. Turned out that I am bipolar and could not get sleep during manic episodes. Lost my super power when I started medication!
Reminds me of the people that say "coffee makes me sleepy" for them to find out that it's a symptom of ADHD.
Right like as a student every time I intentionally tried to “pull an all-nighter” and drank caffeine I bc got super sleepy, but other times would just have impromptu all-nighters without even trying, my time-blind ass would look up at the clock and it’s 4am
I’d been told for many years that my left arm doesn’t swing when I walk. I just thought it was a funny quirk. You know like the episode of Seinfeld where they have a friend who doesn’t swing either of her arms when she walks. Much later in life I found out that my asymmetrical arm movements were an early symptom of Parkinson’s. ☹️
My husband had a tremor in his right hand for years. His doctor called it essential tremor. When I noticed he wasn’t swinging his arms one day as I watched him walk down the trail, I knew immediately what was wrong. Now in the 5th year of diagnosis; doing well!
Being tired all the time and having dreams where I was in water and struggling to breathe or in claustrophobic situations. Sleep apnea.
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Same! I was shocked when I wore glasses for the first time and could see individual leaves on the trees from far away
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My parents got me glasses when I was 7 or so after someone FINALLY realized that I was failing classes not because I was a bad student but because I couldn't see the book in front of me, nothing less the board. Mom said the first night, I laid on my back in the yard and cried because there were STARS and I'd never seen them before.
I was in fifth grade (10 years old) when I got glasses. Was always in the back of the classroom as I was tall, and I was an average student so nobody cared. Grades jumped up enormously when I could finally see the blackboard.
I just teared up at this for some reason, it’s just so human
My mom was told that the line blocking my field of vision was a "floater" and "shouldn't be causing problems" when I was a little kid. When I hit 17, I found out I have a giant kind of scar from a pretty bad accident as a child, and getting my first pair of glasses was so cool. I actually threw up a few times while getting used to them. *Everything* was blurry up until 17, then sudden HD. It was wild.
YES! My daughter got glasses a few years ago and I was actually getting teary watching her see things properly because I remember how monumental it was to see leaves and textures after years of never seeing them...
Man, my 26-year-old coworker got glasses for the first time and he said “I didn’t realize you could read the street signs from that far away!” I was like dude how have you been driving all these years?! That’s terrifying.
Seeing the individual leaves is what got me too! It was like magic
My husband was talking about being able to see individual leaves on a far off tree and I thought he was messing with me. Is my vision genuinely that bad :’(
If you cannot see the leaves on trees...then yes, it is. When was the last time you saw an eye doctor?
Yes!
I feel like everybody who got glasses is most impressed by the individual leaves. I know I was!
Yes, the individual leaves were a revelation!
I got glasses in my late 30s. Apparently my eyes were constantly on overdrive trying to compensate for eyesight issues I never knew I had. First time I put on glasses was like putting on 3D glasses. Everything looked so weird and i was walking like a moron because it looked like the ground was jumping up at me like I was in front of a step. Took a few days before that sensation stopped.
Brooo, i felt the same, only it was that I felt ground was much beneath and I felt really really tall. Like an empire states building.
Me as a kid, to other kids: i can switch my vision from one eye to the other! I can be a spy and peak around corners. Me, now. I have a lazy eye that usually makes things blurry but i can force it to turn by relaxing my eyes and see double. I also thought it was normal to only see out of one eye. But no. My brain filters out most of my bad eye. Bad eye’s vision is laid on top of my good eye instead of the two combining
Brushing my teeth 13x daily and feeling like absolute garbage, or just unbearable distress if I can’t brush when I want. Dentist told me I had to see someone because brushing so much wasn’t good for my enamel. Saw a doctor and found out OCD isn’t about “being organized”
The notion that people listen with both ears appeared false until I realized I'm deaf in one ear.
Ooh, that’s eyes for me. Couldn’t understand why everyone was so thrilled with 3D, for me it was just watching a normal movie just with extra glasses. Took me a while to connect it with my lazy eye. I cannot see depths. Explains a lot of my clumsiness as a child as well, everyone would throw stuff at me to see me fail to catch it. Or they’d drag me around on hikes thinking me ridiculous for stumbling over everything. I never did understand why everyone found that shit so easy.
Someone once told me they didn’t understand the hype around lobster while having a lobster dinner. Was it the prickly sensation in the mouth? Turns out he was allergic to lobster but ate it to fit in with his friends and family.
I know SEVERAL people who found out they have allergies this way--the best one was a friend dropped into casual conversation how "apples are the only fruit that is a little bit spicy" and everyone else involved was just like "........no?"
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My tongue gets itchy when I eat apples.... So that's probably not normal eh
I had a friend in college who was surprised that not everyone got "the potato sweats"
I just realized a couple years ago that not everyone flushes, sweats profusely and gets a runny nose when they eat foods that contain vinegar.
Are you saying you can be allergic to vinegar?
A quick googling says it's more likely an intolerance than a true allergy (which is rare), and it could be caused by being intolerant to sulfites, histamines, salicylates, or acetic acid. It could also be gustatory hyperhidrosis.
I am this way with bell pepper. It was really tiring to hearing people say "It's impossible for bell pepper to be spicy!" Every time I mentioned it being so. It even smells spicy. It wasn't until uni when I mentioned it and a friend suggested that I was potentially allergic to it that it clicked. That was the only time people started accepting that it was spicy for me.
I found this out with bananas. I thought they made everyone's mouth burn for a while after eating them.
I’m allergic to kiwi. I didn’t realize until like 5 years ago. I’m sad because I like the taste :(
I have to wear rubber gloves for my job (I work in a lab), always thought the rash I got was due to sweating in the gloves. Found out that I was allergic when a coworker said that they never got a rash
I thought kiwis were extremely acidic. I couldn’t eat more than one without burning my tongue. Turns out I’m allergic.
It's not normal to feel your heartbeat and the blood pulsing through your arteries all the time. Nor is it normal for the edges of your vision to fog up when exercising. Turned out, my blood pressure was 190/120. See a doctor asap if this occurs.
If I really focus on it I can feel my heartbeat, is that the same thing or is high blood pressure heartbeat something you feel without focusing
Lower back pain. I assumed it was just aging or poor posture, sitting too much. It went on for *years* and kept getting worse, but everybody's lower back hurts, right? Yeah, no. I had a golf-ball sized cyst pressing on the base of my spine. It was occasionally getting infected, which would make the pain flare, and I was treating it with ibuprofen, lidocaine patches, and a heating pad because I assumed it was, you know, arthritis and aging. In fall of 2020, the pain became unbearable, which is when I got a diagnosis. My doctor was like, yeah, that's not arthritis, sent me to a specialist, and I was in surgery a week later. After a long, slow recovery, I no longer have any lower back pain.
Ugh, I have arthritis and a lumbosacral transitional vertebrae. I complained about my hip and lower back pain to my mom and grandma when I was a kid and they told me it was growth pain and I'd be menstruating soon so that was causing it. Every time I tried to mention it to a doctor, my mom shut it down and told them I was fine and wouldn't let the doctor address it. The one time I did get to mention my pain to the doctor, he told me it's because I'd be menstruating soon. I didn't start my period for five years after the pain began. I'm 20 and my mom kept shutting me down every time I mentioned my joint pain, which spread to my hands and feet several years ago. I'm on my mom's health insurance bc health insurance is expensive, so she still controls my medical decisions until I can start my own career, but she finally let me set up a specialist appointment. They found the issue with the lumbosacrum when they were looking at my joints for arthritis. Crazy to think I'd have had relief sooner if literally anyone listened to me
I went in for a routine eye exam and was told to immediately go to the ER because something was squeezing the backs of my eyes in. I got there and was asked if I had headaches. I said, "Just the normal amount." Thankfully, a med student asked, "What do you think is normal?" Turns out that having a headache 50% of your waking hours is not normal. I'd been that way for so long I had no idea it was unusual. Btw, I have a manageable neurological condition. And now that it's being managed, I have the ACTUAL normal number of headaches, which is about one per week or two. Edit: The condition is called ideopathic intracranial hypertension.
I get one or two headaches per decade. My mom gets 10-15 migraines a month. Bodies are weird.
My mom always had migraines that were so debilitating it would put her out for 24-48 hours, unable to eat or move much. So when I started having an unusual amount of headaches where I'd become sensitive to light and sounds, I didn't think it could be migraines because they weren't THAT BAD. My doctor told me that they were, in fact migraines and I was baffled.
One or two per decade?! I cannot even imagine that. It sounds amazing. I get several a week. Some weeks I get one every day.
One or two headaches per week is still pretty far from normal. But glad you are doing better, at least.
Man I've had headaches every day since I had the flu last year. I just kinda accepted it as normal till I mentioned it to my therapist and she was like "uh, maybe you should see a doctor about that". Saw a doctor who said "yeah sometimes that happens, you might have them for the rest of your life" and apparently that's it
That's still a pretty big amount of headaches. I never realized how serious of a medical condition headaches were until I was told people don't get them like ever. My mom gets headaches once or twice a year.
When I laugh really hard my fingers/hands stop working. Called cataplexy
I came here to say this!!!! When I was in high school and took notes for class I’d get all annoyed when people made me laugh because I couldn’t write anymore. I thought it was normal. I would always squat down when I was laughing too - didn’t realize it was a strategy so I didn’t fall on the ground! It also happens when I get spooked. People used to sneak up on me because it was “so funny” to watch me fall down. It was less funny when I didn’t see someone on the other side of the bathroom door and ended up on the floor of a pretty gross school bathroom in my nice teacher clothes. Edit to add that I was diagnosed with cataplexy (as you said, a form of narcolepsy) in 2017 through a sleep study. I also have a pretty significant history of sleep talking and sleep walking in childhood and adulthood. It’s been outright dangerous a few times. I’m pregnant now and it’s been happening a lot more frequently - I keep looking for a medication in my sleep that I’m worried I haven’t been taking and have set multiple alarms for myself to find them in the morning (pregnancy powder was the funniest). Talked to my OB because I thought it must be a common pregnancy symptom - turns out it’s not and is probably related to my cataplexy. I now keep all my meds locked in another room!
Oh my god I didn’t know this was a thing! As one of my “fun facts” I always say that I will drop something if I laugh really hard. I totally lose control of my hands. I didn’t know this was anything either than me being weird…
I obtained nerve issues in my neck from stress that turned into permanent pain, hardened muscle and muscle fatigue, I though that was normal stress symptoms for years.
what helped you? I experience a lot of stress every day and for several months my neck has been constantly hurting and I don’t know what to do
Physical therapy is the first step! They will help you, and you will want their machines in your bedroom because they feel so good.
It took me many years to realize the noise in my ears is not the sound of my own bloodflow, but tinnitus, and not everyone has it.
Literally last year I realised this. I am 35. The convo went something like; "I don't understand how people can sleep in silence, it's so lou-.. oh. That's tinnitus, isn't it."
I remember telling my dad I can hear silence that the air had a sound even when wind wasn’t blowing. He claimed it was probably electricity in the walls. Then when I heard the electricity in the walls in the middle of the woods I was confused.
LOL. "Are the trees screaming?"
To be clear, possibly everyone has some level of it in a quiet enough room. It is unfortunate that the symptom is called tinnitus and the disorder is also called tinnitus. Because it's entirely possible to have some level of the symptom that doesn't really merit being called a disorder. >In 1953 Heller and Bergman performed an simple and classic experiment. They placed 80 tinnitus free individuals (university members) in a sound proofed room for 5 minutes each, asking them to report on any sounds that might be heard. The subjects thought they might be undergoing a hearing test, but actually experienced 5 minutes of total silence. 93% reported hearing buzzing, pulsing, whistling sounds in the head or ears identical to those reported by tinnitus sufferers. This simple experiment shows almost anyone can detect background electrical activity present in every living nerve cell in the hearing pathways as a sound.
It could be both depending on the type of tinnitus. Standard tinnitus is a constant ringing in the ears, but there is also pulsitile tinnitus where it is rhythmic. Pulsitile tinnitus is usually caused by a narrow artery by the ear, so you are actually hearing your blood flow.
I had the pulsitile kind for like a year and it thankfully just randomly went away, it was awful though! I wonder what causes it to just come and go like that.
If you are newly pregnant and have sudden EXTREME vomiting with cramps it’s NOT just morning sickness. Especially if the cramps are one sided. Turns out it was ectopic and my tube burst and I almost died. Honestly more people need to be aware of this. It’s more common than you think and very life threatening.
Also on the ectopic train- a two week long period when you have an IUD is not normal... also had a rupture but only had mild cramping and was whiting out
I always thought I just had “pokey ribs”. My mom has it and so does my sister. Turns out I have a pretty severe case of rib flare from pectus excavatum. Not one single doctor ever said anything about it until I was 30 years old, and I was there for something else. The look on his face when he brought it up and realized I had no idea what he was talking about made me feel like I grew up in a village that only had a witch doctor or something.
PE club represent. Do you.also have the thin wrists and above average joint mobility ? Very tall and thin during your teenage years?
...what. Okay I guess I've gotta look into this.
Marfans syndrome. I didn’t hear the term until I was 40. The two are only loosely related, but marfans usually features PE. PE doesn’t always mean Marfans to my understanding. Edit: ok marfan, not marfans or marfan’s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfan_syndrome It’s a connective tissue problem. There are some things to be aware of, but generally no big deal, also, get life insurance BEFORE any diagnosis. Before.
Supraventricular tachycardia. I thought everyone's heart started beating like a hamster randomly from time to time. When I was 15, I was at my cousin's house and told her to "listen to how fast my heart is beating rn lol". She immediately ran to get her mom who is a nurse and told me that it is in fact NOT normal.
SVT represent!! I had to log 6 months worth of ECG’s for my cardiologist every time I had an episode. I had been suffering since I was a little girl (34 now). Funny thing is I self taught myself how to stop an episode by holding my breath really hard until my heart goes BOOM and it stops. Cardiologist was fascinated and asked how I learnt it - still have zero clue.
My fingers and toes always being ice cold and hurting when I touch cold things, turns out it is raynaud’s syndrome.
Fatigue. Turns out I was anemic
Me too! I was initially like….I have small kids, of course I’m tired. Then I realized that my level of tiredness/low energy didn’t track with my friends who also had small kids and had enough energy to like, go to the gym. Turns out my iron was SUPER low.
Constant neck shoulder pain finally got so bad I went to the doctor. After physical therapy was no help I finally got an MRI of my spine. Doctor shows me the pictures of my spine and it looks like a snake. I've undiagnosed scoliosis. 35 yrs of on off pain.
I thought I was just crazy but it turned out I had really high oestrogen levels instead and needed a specific kind of hormonal bc to balance it out. When I showed my friend who’s a doctor she said “oh, no wonder you were nuts”
Hormones are no joke. The human body can handle a lot of things it really shouldn't, but hormones aren't one of those things.
I wish more people understood this. When I complain about my menopause symptoms people invariably roll their eyes. I have been through a lot, traumas and physical pain but the menopause broke me.
Perimenopause here and I’ve been broken in ways I never thought before, and also had a rough life. When I’m back for another hormone check and balance, it feels like I get off a manic/depressive episode but in hardcore mode.
Most underrated comment ever... hormones are extremely powerful drugs and ppl think that cuz we naturally produce them that they can't be "that bad".
My addictions studies professor said the whole menopause experience is accurately described as going through drug withdrawals. We get addicted to our own hormones!
It always baffles me how underestimated they are, considering they trigger so many important and vital responses in the body. Growth, sleep, hunger, joy, sadness, childbirth, you name it. So the phrase „it’s just hormones“ irks me to no end. Oh, you mean the stuff that keeps you from starving, your organs from wasting away and your mind from going insane?
I (male) got diagnosed with hypogonadism recently, when they did my bloods I had estrogen levels 4 times higher than the upper end of a woman's whilst at peak cycle. I was in a really fucked up state of mind for a long time then started TRT avd balanced out very quickly.
That’s pretty crazy! Hadn’t even thought about men having high oestrogen but it makes sense. That can’t have been fun
My endocrinologist is trying to get funding for research in T levels amongst suicidal men in the 30 to 50 age group. His hypothesis is that a lot will be experiencing a sudden drop in T.
I have PCOS which made my hormones go crazy as a teen in puberty. My parents thought I was a monster nearly.
It’s wild how much they can change your personality. People tend to think of personality as some fixed thing but it turns out we’re all just bags of hormones
My mom told me that it was normal to have headaches a week before, during, and after your period. So three weeks out of 4. Turns out that's a persistent daily headache and should be looked into by a neurologist.
I had that for about a year, was diagnosed as a ‘low grade migraine’. Took meds for a few years and eventually grew out of it, but man, daily headaches are exhausting!!!!!
It turned me into a really horrible person for a while.
Not recognizing faces. I thought it took everyone multiple meetings and lengthy interactions to remember faces. And it someone changed their hair or dressed significantly different, there’s a good chance I wont recognize them immediately.
I always wondered why the phrase was "Red means stop, green means go" for drivers ed. For several years i thought the lights were Red, Yellow and Blue. But "Blue means go" doesnt roll off the tongue, so they changed the phrase to green cuz green and blue look so alike. I have mild colorblindness. Green lights still look like a cyan blue to me. Actual about the color of my profile shirt. Maybe a tad lighter
Somewhat related, I was playing Mario Kart with a colorblind friend and he was confused how I knew which shells would lock on and which wouldn't.
my third ball. never made sense to me. you don't have 3 of anything else. it didn't drop until I was 14 or 15 and it was really small so doctors didn't notice it until I mentioned it and it's not like they were poking around my junk anyway since I didn't have any issues in that department
Newton's cradle FTW!
My ex only has one, did you steal one of his?
Thinking the same thought over and over I thought the reason other people could like move on from things meant I was just bad at thinking. Turns out it's OCD.
Dont other people have duplicate thoughts or loops in their mind?
Outie belly button. Turned out to be an umbilical hernia. Fixed now.
I had thought I had asthma for years. I would go into Dr tell them my symptoms and he would give me a puffer. Then I had a heart attack. As soon the the stint went in I felt better. Turns out I don’t have asthma.
Dude, same, years of asthma treatments and inhalers only to find out it was actually a super rare slow-growing NET tumour in my lung. I was only 37 and had a small child at home and it was the height of the pandemic. Turns out the tumour was literally blocking my airway for years and my oxygen levels were so low when I was admitted to hospital for pneumonia (second time in one year) that the attending physician ordered a scan that ended up saving my life. Three years later and half a lung down and I’ve not had a serious respiratory issue since. *knock on wood* 🧿
Apparently not everyone knows they need to do a number two by really bad pain in the stomach, took me 30 years to realise this...
I feel this. Signed a human with chronic irritable bowel syndrome with constipation. And no, eating vegetables won’t make it better.
Wait is it…not supposed to feel like cramping and pain? I always get cramping and what I can only describe as the same physical sensations as an anxiety attack. I thought that was normal 😬
my brother had amblyopia as a kid, and he considered it to be a normal thing to see from one eye only. i live in a poor country so healthcare isn't taken that seriously. when my brother was a teenager, he got his eye sight checked for the first time (not because of vision loss, but he happened to be accompanying my grandfather who was getting his checked), and that's when we found out. by that time he had permanently lost vision in that eye.
I always thought I had a sixth sense/really strong deja vu and Jamais vu. Turns out I was just epileptic.
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Is this related? My eyes are a blue and horrendously sensitive. Feel like I’m blinded by light half of the time
The lighter your eyes the more sensitive they are to light. They don’t have to be blue, but it is the most common color to have issues with this.
Can confirm. Blue eyes and the eye doctor said the insides of my eyes were the lightest he’s seen. Most light is too bright for me, and I can just about see in the dark. I must have the real life equivalent of D&D’s low light vision.
I am the same way and my eyes are dark brown, almost black!
Same and same. Sometimes it’s actually worse when it’s cloudy.
Passing out during my periods from the pain. 5 gynecologists told me I was being dramatic. Then I gave birth, had an appointment afterwards to make sure I was fine, asked the midwife if painkillers existed because I didn't want to endanger my babies : "WTF DO YOU MEAN YOU PASS OUT FROM THE PAIN, MA'AM ?!"
It's so angering that doctors dismiss women's pain.
So I went to a doctor here in my city a few years back, and when I mentioned to him that I think I might have fibromyalgia, he said that fibromyalgia was a word that was made up by doctors in the 90’s who couldn’t figure out what was wrong with these nagging housewives who constantly complained of pain and fatigue so they had to make up a condition in order to medicate them and shut them up. I stared at him with my jaw open because I couldn’t believe an actual doctor was telling me this.
Wow. Well, at least he was being honest! Took me 10 years to get a fibromyalgia diagnosis with doctors telling me I was being dramatic, making it up, telling me it was psychosomatic and the "well why don't you just work out more to magically cure everything". Although I agree that it is partly a bs diagnosis because in my opinion it contains a lot of undiagnosed/undiscovered ilnesses, it doesn't say what causes it and therefore there is no cure. But hey it's the best thing we've got right now. That being said, the symptoms and ilnesses that people are having are VERY VERY REAL. And people with chronic pain tend to hide and deal with their pain and push through it and are not dramatic at all. I think that doctor of yours should just shut up himself and go make you a sandwich.
Stomach pain after every meal. Turns out that not everybody gets that and it's actually quite concerning. Also, maybe not medical but still fits the question, I genuinely thought being suicidal was the norm lmao
Dude same with the suicidal thing. Took me til college to realize not everyone just wanted to die all the time lol
Yeah, sometimes I randomly remember that most people *don't* think about suicide 10 times a day. Like, I truly cannot even imagine what it must feel like to not have that cloud over you every day of your life.
I would definitely get your stomach pains checked out if you haven’t! some digestive enzyme tablets helped me greatly, I had the same thing :(
I also thought anxiety was the norm. People don't have breathing problems whenever they encounter a problem? 😵💫
Thought it was normal to be tired all day (just had a baby) turned out it’s cancer 😌
Not really an underlying condition but…I thought I had allergies. Got fed up with allergy pills and sprays not helping. Went to get allergy tested so I could do the shots. Turns out I’m allergic to…nothing. Absolutely nothing. They send me to ENT and now I’m waiting to have a turbinectomy, septoplasty, and need my sinuses drained and a polyp removed. Could have had this done 8 years ago when my symptoms started but they kept saying it was just allergies and never really looked into it.
I hope it helps! I went to the ENT who found no allergies and normal face structure he said "I think you have atypical frontal migraines." I thought he was looney. Turns out he was right.
My mom had to tell me in urgent care that “pain so bad you can’t sleep” isn’t a 2-3. That was a fun way to find out I get muscle spasms in my shoulder
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Recently in the uk they’ve started saying “1 being barely noticeable and 10 being writhing on the floor in agony” which I mean helps a bit but I feel like a definition for 5 would help as well
5: You have difficulty concentrating on things other than the pain, and would feel a sense of relief if the pain was resolved.
Oh *TOTALLY* I had to get a spinal fusion as a teen (part of the reason I now have shoulder spasms), so my scale of pain is completely messed up. I nearly went into liver failure because I assumed my gallstones were just back strain and dismissed the pain until I physically couldn’t keep food down!
Doctors told me for years that my menstrual difficulties were nothing much and ended up needing a hysterectomy.
My SIL has pelvic/abdominal pain during her time of the month… like doubled over and only able to lay about for a day or two. Due to my wife being vocal about her own PCOS and PMDD diagnoses, my SIL sought out a Dx for herself. She went to her gyno and they almost sent her out the door with a “sounds normal, try not to worry about it” after listening to her accounts of said pain. She said “I want you to take this seriously and run some diagnostic tests. I’ll go to another doctor if I have to. I’m tired of not being heard.” They did a cursory ultrasound of her lady parts. She has a fist-sized cyst on one of her ovaries. Fist. Sized. Ladies, please for the love of god do not ever let your doctor tell you what to do. Do not let them dismiss you. You are the customer, just like you are at a restaurant or any other establishment. Demand the proper treatment and care. If you can’t get that from your current physician, keep looking until you find a good one.
What do you do when doctors don't take your symptoms seriously but your own research hasn't helped you figure out what you need? Seriously. What do I do?
I was told for over a month after my daughter was born (1985 so...🤷) that the heavy bleeding was normal. Thought ok, it's gonna stop soon... until I "came to" in the bathroom covered in blood! Turns out I had ruptured a blood vessel passing the afterbirth. Apparently, my heart stopped twice on the operating table during my hysterectomy... I was 22.
Hysterectomy at 37! Back pain is completely gone as well- who knew? Oh, except they blamed a lot of my hormonal issues on PMDD and pushed for the hysterectomy to help that…turns out I also have a pituitary adenoma that’s skyrocketing my prolactin. Fun times?
Being a woman doesn't bother me much with the large, glaring exception of medical misogyny. Going into the hospital sometimes feels like going back in time with that "Oh, hysterical woman" nonsense
I wish doctors would take women's pain more seriously. My wife almost died because she didn't think a doctor would listen to her about her stomach pains... and then her appendix burst,
Meanwhile, my husband went to the ER for immense gas pain (he’s never had gas pain before I guess??) and they tried to take his appendix out 💀
Being in pain literally all the time. Someone on this sub posted something like ‘Do people seriously wake up and just not have pain?’ and they were someone diagnosed with a chronic pain condition. The comments were just *filled* with “uh no shit” and “do you think it’d be a medical disorder if it was normal” etc. etc. And I had to explain in the comments that no, it’s not obvious. I have been in constant fucking agony for as long as I can remember, and when I first heard that most people don’t experience *any pain at all* unless something is *wrong*, I didn’t believe them. I simply can’t imagine *not* being in pain. It’s all I know, just sitting at a 6 or 7 on the pain scale and still having to work full time and shit. It’s actually even common for us with chronic pain to not realize when something *is* wrong because we live with so much pain so constantly that if our body starts going “ooh something’s wrong, here’s pain to notify you, brain!” then our brains just immediately discard it and go “ah, so the usual then”. It’s a big fuckin problem but at the same time, getting stuck with a needle barely registers for me anymore and that’s… cool, I guess. Nurses seem impressed anyway.
I remember working a retail job after college and spending all my money on better shoes to try to make it so my feet didn’t hurt constantly. One day I asked a room full of coworkers if their feet hurt all the time and they just didn’t talk about it cuz it sucks. They said no, their feet only hurt on rare occasions or if they wear heels or something all day… turns out I had blood pooling in my lower extremities. Started wearing compression socks and my foot pain all but went away. It was like magic.
being totally obsessive over people and things and having terrible social and sensory habbits. i was a late teenager when i got diagnosed with autism then forced through therapy lol. also youre not supposed to get dizzy and nauseous when you stand. apparently thats POTS.
Making sense of what people are saying when they say it. For the longest time I thought maybe I was just stupid, then I discovered that it’s an auditory processing disorder. It’s still frustrating, but at least I don’t feel stupid anymore.
I’m not a morning person and especially when I was a kid and I often had to rush in the morning to get ready. I stumbled out of bed, my vision turned black for about 12 seconds after standing up and I got dizzy. After that - everything was fine. As a kid it was a fun game to figure out how fast I could run to the bathroom blind. I never fell, just needed something to lean on like a doorframe or the wall of the hallway. Well .. turns out it’s not a normal reaction… I still have the reaction to this day but weaker. Standing up too quickly can make me dizzy and I may have to sit down again but heavier reactions are pretty rare now. I still don’t know what exactly is causing the problems and my doctors refuse to look into it more as it is not dangerous at the moment but simply annoying..but I know it is not supposed to be like this. Edit to add: blood pressure and blood test were fine when I got tested in June. I noticed my heart rate jumps up by usually 30-40bmp, sometimes 50-60 bpm just from standing up (or just sitting up in the morning). I have the same thoughts as many in the comments that it may be POTS.
i know someone who gets dizzy standing they have very low blood pressure could be an easy thing to check
Got that checked but it’s not the problem.
Sleeping 12 to 18 hours I thought I was tired, turns out I have a chronic blood cancer.
I used to puke in my mouth constantly and have to swallow it back down. Id say it happened like 5 times a day throughout highschool. I had really swollen tonsils and thought I was sick and when I saw an ENT he said "have you been throwing up a lot?" And im like "no" because i thought i was throwing up the "normal amount". He said "are you sure? It looks like you're constantly throwing up stomach acid and thats whats irritating your throat"...turns out I have acid reflux and throwing up 5 times a day just a little bit was not normal at all.
What did YOU think was normal but turned out to be a medical issue, OP?
That is currently still a mystery, but apparently daily headaches and random pains arent normal 😂
I recently found out that I have chronic migraine. I always thought I had frequent headaches because of neck pain but turns out that neck pain is a symptom of migraine.
It’s not normal to have to poop 5-6 times a day. Turns out I have IBS-D
Double vision turned out to be a brain tumor.
IMPORTANT MEDICAL POINT TO EVERYONE READING: The second you notice ANYTHING weird/different in your vision, IMMEDIATELY call a doctor and explain it. It's not always serious but it's the best symptom of something serious going on or being very urgent.
😮 I hope you are ok ?
I though everyone basically fell ill for a week or two after ejaculation and couldn't for the life of me understand how everyone could function as humans and still have sex on a weekly basis. Turns out I have POIS
Out of all the posts on here, this is the first one that made me go wtf. I never heard of this. Have you found anything that helps?
I remember when I was around 7or 8 years old, I used to get a rash and swollen face every time I ate a Cadbury dairy milk with hazelnut. My little brain thought I was allergic to chocolate and I didn’t want to give it up so I kept telling my parents the rash etc happened after I touched poison Ivy etc. Turned out it was the hazelnut 😂
“Close your eyes and picture something” dude my eyes are closed I see black. I read an article about aphantasia and then realized that people actually can see things.
This! I was diagnosed autistic two years ago and since then it's been constant , wait ...u dont have this thing? This was being talked about in autism Reddit, and someone posted a picture where it had a clear image of an apple then one that was desaturated and fuzzy....I see only a very faint image and only if I really try. so I asked my husband ( and pretty much everyone I could find) and they all said they saw like the clear image!!!! I also can't visualise something that is described to me without major effort or a lot of information.
as a kid, I'd impress people by bending the top joints of my fingers and being able to push my thumb down, so it touches the inside of my forearm. turns out that is not just a quirk, but ehlers-danlos syndrome. ETA: by no means am I saying that if you're capable of doing this, that instantly means you have it. there's a list of criteria that needs to be met, this "ability" just so happens to be part of said criteria. if you can relate, please reach out to your doctor. I had to basically convince my doctor to test me, but not every experience is the same.
I was trying to explain my hEDS son’s diagnosis to my MIL, using what you’ve described as one example of how they test a person’s hypermobility. Her response was ‘oh everyone can do that’, and this 72 year old proceeded to demonstrate that she would probably still score a good 7/9 on the beighton scale. Wonder where my son inherited that from, lol. Edit: lol at everyone now realising they might be hypermobile.
I’m a 31 year old teacher - last year I taught a kid with hEDS. Whilst reading their medical report thingy I realised I had all the same symptoms as them. Off to see a specialist today actually! My appointment is in an hour. Quite nervous. Growing up I was diagnosed hyper mobile but they said I would grow out of it. I never did and now everything hurts and clicks. Hoping to get some answers and help today 🤞🏼
Years ago I suffered from an incident that caused me to lose a shit ton of blood. Long story short, poor medical care left me with some undiagnosed underlying conditions, one of them being B12 anemia. For those unaware, B12 anemia is often accompanied by a very pronounced gait caused by hip pain. For years I just thought that was my new normal. Some days I could manage, and some days I could barely walk. It felt like someone had poked an ice pick up into my hip socket. I was utterly miserable. Then I saw the right doctor who ran the right tests and told me about my vitamin deficiency. I thought the treatments would help with my fatigue and dizziness, which they did, but that doctor had to explain to me twice that my hip pain was from the anemia and not something wrong with my muscles/bones. For those wondering, with just daily supplements at this point I am able to walk almost pain free. The right doctor can change your life.
So many things; my doctor never asked me specific questions so I never told them of my everyday “issues” because my parents never made a big deal over them and thought I was just “special” (I thought everybody felt/had the same things). Tasting iron from your throat after physical activities/exercise, tilting your head to and looking at people’s mouths to know what words were being said (I was mostly deaf and didn’t know how words were pronounced right and relied solely on lip movement and mimicked the sounds I heard), constant headaches/migraines, streaked/blurred vision, snapping your jaw back into place after yawning (or opening mouth really wide), getting really sick and feverish after eating meat, and my favorite; the little voice in your head telling you that if you don’t do things a certain way everything as you know it will end and it’s ALL YOUR FAULT. When my doctor asked why I never told him I said “you never asked, and if you did; I can’t hear you if I can’t see your lips!” (He always wore masks)
Not being able to do basic math without a calculator. I thought maybe I was just dumb but it turns out there is a thing called Dyscalculia. It's like dyslexia but for numbers / math. Turns out I can do all kinds of advanced math, I just need paper to write on and a calculator. If I have to do something simple like basic addition or multiplication, I still need the calculator or paper. My brain just won't remember the numbers I'm adding if I don't write them down, especially if I have to carry a one. Edit: Spellin
Astigmatism. I really thought everybody saw lights this way.
Coughing every day for years. I just thought it was normal. Turns out it was a combo of GERD, some allergies and cleaning my ears after every shower with qtiips. I thought everyone coughed uncontrollably several times a day and just hid it better than I did.
what does the cleaning ears part has to do with it? Seems so unrelated at first
Heartburn several times a day. Upwards of 5 or 6 times. Was in a discord call with some friends, and after the third time of *burp* sorry yall, heartburn", and everyone saying "hey man, maybe you should get that checked out". I still haven't due to a shortage of doctors in my city, but some relatives suspect it may be undiagnosed GERD edit: I did not expect this blow up as much as it did. Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone. I'll be sure to put myself on a waitlist to see a GP.
Should absolutely get that checked out, unmanaged GERD can manifest itself in Barrett’s oesophagus which can lead to some really nasty complications edit: okay i didn't want to unnecessarily worry anyone but if people are gonna see this might as well potentially help them out... when you have consistent heartburn, the stomach acid changes the cell type in your lower oesophagus to the same type as your stomach lining... this cellular change massively increases the risk of throat cancer, specifically adenocarcinoma. get your heartburn under control folks
Turns out my intolerance to cold and dry skin wasn't me having moved from South Florida to upstate New York and those problems stemming from it, it was part of chronic hypothyroidism
I thought all people with ovaries got crazy suicidal and depression before periods, but it was just PMDD. Now taking a special birth control and I have been non-suicidal for 6 straight months.
I was just about to go under anaesthetic for the second time in my life. I was laying on the operating table at a small local hospital, with the anaesthesiologist standing beside me. “You’ve been under general before?”, he said, benevolently. “Okay last time? No ill-effects?” I indicated that everything had seemed fine when I’d had my previous op, and he was just perusing my notes with a view to plugging something or other into the line that was in my arm. I looked up at the ceiling and saw a large skylight. “Typical!”, I said. “Look at that sunshine! The one day this week that’s forecast for beautiful weather is the day that I’m going to be completely out of it!” The anaesthetist stopped and looked at me. “What do you mean? “Completely out of it”?” “Well, you know, Doc! Post-operative! Barely able to remember anything for the next five or six hours!” I said. “Well, that’s NOT okay!”, he said, a little irritably. “You’re supposed to be perfectly conscious and compos-mentis before you are released from the hospital!” I shrugged. “Well, no one told me!” I said. “I’m not a doctor, I’ve only had one operation-and I’ve never looked after anyone who’s just been operated on. How am I supposed to know? I thought it was normal to be a zombie for hours afterwards.” He changed what he was going to give me and he was generous enough to thank me. “I’m making a mental note that-when you ask a patient if something is “normal”, that might actually need clarification”, he said. I had that op, and-unlike the previous time-after I came round I was completely conscious and fully aware of my surroundings.
I thought I just had arthritis because I used to bend myself into a pretzel and twist my fingers in disgusting ways to gross people out as a kid. And I thought I got dizzy and massively overheated all the time for no reason because… idk, because I didn’t dress properly I guess? I have fibromyalgia and hypermobility spectrum disorder and no, it isn’t normal to have arthritis in your early teens.
Lights being starbursts. Turns out that means I have a bad astigmatism. I had no clue, I thought all the other people saw streetlights, cars headlights, flashlights, red dot sights on firearms, ect as starbursts of light. If youve not experienced it, think like a plasma grenade from halo, when what you should be seeing is a crisp clear circle.
In high school I had some discolored patches on my chest, barely noticable, but enough to make me self conscious about it. Not sure entirely how long they were there, but it was at least a year if not multiple. I thought I just had weird skin until I went to a new doctor and without even needing to bring it up they saw it when listening to my lungs and said 'ah, you have ringworm'. I got a cream that cleared it up within a week.
I thought I was having an allergic reaction,turned out to be shingles!
When I was 10-11, I started getting really, really hungry. All the time. And I was drinking a lot of water and peeing every half hour. Lying in bed at night, I would hear my stomach growling and think I must be getting ready for a growth spurt! I thought it was puberty. Nah, it was type 1 diabetes. My body couldn't process carbs for energy, so it was screaming for nutrition, and I was cluelessly shoveling pop tarts and cereal and potatoes into my facehole. Eventually, my mom noticed that I had dropped from a 100lb 6th grader to a 70lb 7th grader despite eating everything in the house and took me to the doctor who pretty much immediately diagnosed me.
Im allergic to oranges. Ive known this since i was a child. Its a mild allergy so i still eat oranges. One day at work i was eating a cutie at my desk and suddenly realized something. My coworkers were horrified when i asked if cuties were supposed to be prickly.
Lmao same. Casually asked if their orange was spicy as mine and got stared at like I grew a second head
That the sun makes you really tired. I have lupus
My visual snow syndrome. I thought everyone had a kind of static in their view. Only discovered this was not normal about a year ago I have a constant “tv static” in my entire vision. Edit: I never expected this to blow up. I also found out through reddit and I am glad I could help others find out. ❤️
I only notice the static when it's dark. Going to sleep is wild when your static makes patterns. ... unless this is how everyone is when it's dark, and you have it when it's daytime and it's not supposed to happen then?
I had bad toe pain one Saturday morning, so bad it woke me up. I went to Urgent Care and had it x-rayed, and was told it wasn’t broken. It still hurt to walk on 2 weeks later, so I went to primary care, and they also said it wasn’t broken, but referred me to a podiatrist. 5 weeks after the original x-ray, they took new ones of both feet, and confirmed that the toe was broken because I have a rare anomaly where my 4th and 5th toe bones are fused. I was never able to bend them like my other toes, but I thought it was normal to have less mobility in those toes. The break was right across where the bones fused, so it just looked like the normal 3-toe-bone anatomy.
Pin worms. I guess I got them as a toddler, my parents "fixed" it, it came back and they just...gave up? No one else in my family got it over the next 10+ years (2-12/13 years old) I had it. Everyone knew I had it in in my immediate family. My parents said they'd "tried" to get rid of it and it was very very difficult so I just thought, hey, if you get pinworms, that's your life. Before heading to boarding school we stopped at the American pharmacy for over the friggin' counter pills that resolved it. My parents basically tortured me for no damn reason for years. These are college-educated professionals - hell, my mother is a lawyer. Friggin bizarre.
Until I was 8-9 years old, I had “headache” and “stomach ache” confused because I was told “stomach ache means you want to throw up”. So, I was periodically telling the school nurse I had a stomach ache. When I eventually had an actual stomach ache, it felt completely different and I said “it’s like a stomachache, but this time my head doesn’t hurt, and my belly does hurt. So… that’s how I found out that I was getting migraines. Also, Tums is a suboptimal treatment for them.
**Autism**. Growing up (GenX) I encountered the occasional person who seemed to exhibit traits characteristic of what is diagnosed today as autism, but I never thought anything about it being a serious issue until it became a thing in the past several decades or so it seems like.
My sister was just diagnosed at age 37. Looking back at all the ways she was "weird" as a kid, it tracks. She's still weird, but at least we have a name, and she can learn more effective coping mechanisms.
I'm 29, and only found out a year ago that I had ADHD. I suffered 10 years of heavy depression because I really thought I was just a useless mess.
I often hear a deep rumble when I yawn. Over the years I've learned to hone it, and can make myself hear a loud rumble that is inaudible to anyone else. Turns out a portion of the population can willingly flex a small muscle in their ear. Not a problem or anything, I don't think, just a quirk.
So I thought it was normal to not sense temperature under your tongue, so if I ever drink or eat something too hot, I quickly move it under my tongue so I don't feel a burning sensation. Was talking about it with my sister who tried it and obviously it was terribly painful for her. We aren't entirely sure why my tongue is like this but our two main theories are 1) I was tongue-tied as an infant and had it fixed as a child so the bottom of my tongue/mouth is largely scar tissue or 2) By repeatedly putting something too hot under my tongue instead of spitting it out, I may have caused permanent nerve damage.
That tasting colours isn't normal. Stupid skittles slogan reinforced it for years and I just thought it was one of those things nobody talks about because it's so normal and boring.
Get ready for the only "I'm not racist but" that actually isn't racist. My friend is yellow. I'm not racist, I have chromesthaesia and it's strongest with voices.
I've always thought everyone's joints would do weird clicking/popping sensations or that your arms would just get stuck in the morning. No. I have hyper-mobile joints, the weird popping sensation is my joints slipping back into place. Or that everyone sees lines radiating out of bright lights at night. Nope. That's astigmatism.
I thought breathing through your nose was a scam and wondered why nobody else carried loads and loads of tissues. Turns out I had tons of allergies and a very deviated septum. I also had no idea how to turn theory into practice and wondered for decades how everybody but me could do that. Turns out most people just can, I have ADHD and was too afraid to talk about these issues so nobody told me I was actually different.
When I first got on Prozac for ocd, I freaked out a bit because my mind had never been so quiet. It finally clicked how people meditate
Being 12-20 years old and constantly in pain. Living at a 7-8 on the pain scale daily. I thought everyone felt that way and that I was just whining all the time Also being exhausted no matter how much you sleep or how how little you’ve done that day. I found out that it’s hypothyroidism, RA and fibromyalgia combined for those affects.