Doctors of Reddit, what is a disease that terrifies you but most people don’t care about?
Prion dieases, specifically Fatal Familial Insomnia.
Imagine one day you can't fall asleep for some reason.
Within about 18 months, you'll be dead, and there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.
Hantavirus.
Found in rodent waste and inhaled, makes you bleed to death before diagnosis.
Rabies is nothing to mess around with either.
Once symptoms appear, a miserable death is all that's left.
There are two.
'Locked In Syndrome' would be so utterly tedious you'd want to die, especially if it was misdiagnosed as a vegetative state.
Severe 'Central Pain Syndrome' is so awful people with it frequently do kill themselves.
Doctor here.
Strokes
Risk factors include most of the “prexisting condition” that nobody seems to care about (hypertension, diabetes, smoking).
And once you get a stroke it’s can be extremely debilitating and life changing.
I have seen people go from “but grandma was fine just a touch of the sugars” to “grandma now can’t move, talk, or feed herself”.
The fact that 1) your life can change from 1 minute to the next and 2) the fact that you are basically a prison of your own body after wards is just terrifying to me.
Rabies.
I read a thread that TERRIFIED me.
Its a HORRID way to go fa sho
Doctor, currently in residency.
I'd agree with prion diseases that were already mentioned but a terrifying one that is not as known is HSV1 encephalitis.
Caused by the herpes simplex 1 virus which is incredibly common (mainly known for causing cold sores).
HSV encephalitis affects all age groups and almost always leaves people with significant neurological damage or personality changes.
The exact pathogenesis is not known, although immunosuppression may increase risk.
It's rare, but the fact that there is not much of a warning to it and the fact that it can permanently change your personality and leave you with
long-term neurological symptoms even with early treatment with anti-virals is terrifying to me, especially with how common HSV 1 is.
Med student here.
Not really a disease, but antibiotic resistance is the bigger challenge we have in our future.
Bacteria are evolving to being more and more resistant to drugs, some have already reached a point where some strains are resistant to *all* our drugs.
Luckily this process Will take decades to happen on a large scale, but we should not really Speed up this process by taking antibiotics when there Is no Need and not finishing a complete course of antibiotics.
If the doctor told you to take 8 pills, One a day, I don't care that at day 5 you feel fine and can run a
marathon: you still have 3 pills to take.
Otherwise you are Just selecting the "stronger" bacteria that resisted the First 5 days.
We should arrive prepared with new antibiotics and/or a completely new kind of drugs, and not beep them again by using them wrongly.
A Word with no antibiotics Is a Word where you can die for things that nowadays are "visit to your GP" stuff.
Whatever we don't know that's killing us in plain sight.
Thalidomide, DDT, asbestos, mercury vapor lights, lead paint, tobacco.....all were common and accepted as safe 50 years ago.
So what's going to be discovered next?
Not a doctor though.
Med student here.
Leach-Nyhan Syndrome is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Most people have never even heard of it before.
It’s an error in purine metabolism.
This syndrome has a ton of symptoms and co-morbidities, but one of the most shocking is self-mutilation.
These babies often eat their own lips, fingers, and hands.
They also tend to slam their heads against objects.
They often have to be restrained and either have their teeth removed or wear a mouth guard, older people with the disease often ask to be restrained because they have no control.
What makes this disease even worse though is these individuals are not insensitive to pain.
So they feel the pain as they in lack
of a better term “eat themselves”.
Alzheimer’s is scary.
Not even a doctor.
Dementia is secondary, but still anything affecting the brain beep is acary
Legionnaires' disease.
It's caused by a bacteria that can form in stagnant water if pipes aren't flushed often enough.
When my office re-opens, no way am I drinking water from the tap for at least a month.
Not a doctor, but I was once told by a doctor that no one seems to care about Ebola.
Super deadly, super scary, but everyone thinks it’s just some random disease that exists in poor countries.
Alcoholic hepatitis (acute liver injury from alcohol) and cirrhosis (chronic liver injury).
We do not really have any treatment for it beyond steroids (that only sometimes help) in the acute period and supportive care.
Not entirely clear why particular alcohol toxin exposures result in the acute injury (i.e.
some people may be heavy drinkers for a lifetime and have no major acute hepatitis episodes, whereas other people aren't even heavy drinkers and just one bad binge send them over the edge).
Our ICU is often filled with chronic liver cirrhosis patients awaiting transplant and the vast majority do not make it to that point 😢
Ophthalmologist here.
I'm scared to death of retinal detachments.
You could have zero risk factors, be completely young and healthy, and just one day wake up blind.
They can come out of absolutely nowhere.
As an eye surgeon, if I wake up blind in one eye, I won't be able to operate anymore.
There goes years of training and years of school.
It's terrifying.
\*By the way, considering the number of people reading this post such as yourself, I wouldn't be surprised if one of you wake up blind tomorrow morning.
Sleep tight!
If there were a doctor in this thread he/she would probably say cardiovascular disease.
Common cause of death, and patients don't care because they won't die for a number of years.
Not sure if this counts; I’m not a dr but my mom is.
In one of her frequent “don’t do drugs” talks when I was a teenager she told me about serotonin syndrome, which sounds scary af and can happen apparently if you take ecstasy while on certain anti depressants.
Idr the exact details but it involves a really high fever and beep up your kidneys, some people die from it.
It’s really rare though, and luckily did not happen to me despite having used aforementioned drug combination.
Not a doctor, but ALS.
We have all heard of it.
(It’s the disease Stephen Hawking had) but it’s a horrible disease.
My brothers father had it.
And he lived a little longer than they said he would.
At first your speech becomes difficult (sorta like those days when you’re tongue tied and cant predicate your sentences) and it gradually moves to your skeletal muscles.
You lose your motor skills over time and then at some point you’ll become wheelchair bound.
From there it’s just a matter of time until your diaphragm and respiratory system give in.
It’s a horrible disease and people should really realize that.
Edit: illegible word used
Trauma surgeon:
Simple bad luck...
I see so many people die falling from standing...
not really a disease but I have seen things as simple as stepping off a parking block lead to someone losing their leg.
Or a 13 year old girl get scalped when her hair got caught in a go cart engine fan.
Fall from deer stand.
Fall through your roof onto your wife while you were both up there looking for the leak...
Nephew accidentally shooting your penis and scrotum while
looking at a shotgun
Working on my PhD, does that count?
Sudden cardiac arrest.
I knew a girl who went from standing and laughing to being dead in less than a few minutes.
Autopsy had no official cause of death.
19yo, had been previously healthy, no drugs involved.
The thought that despite regular checkups I could go from being totally fine to dead in mere moments... sets my panic attacks off majorly.
MRSA.
super scary.
everyone thinks its just staph.
Not a doctor but I work in a hospital with patients with necrotising fasciitis.
Yikes.
Not a medical docotr, but deep vein thrombosis gives me the absolute heeby jeebys
SIDS is very freaky
Obesity.
It’s become so normalized but it will kill you.
First you’ll become disabled then diseased then you’ll die.
A lot of neurological diseases or genetic disorders bc those are incurable in many ways although there are some meds out there to help treat it
Not a doctor, but my mom's side of the family is plagued with Huntington's.
If one of your parents has it, then you have a 50/50 shot of getting it.
It is legitimately a concoction of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's in one.
I've already seen the involuntary twitches and restlessness of my mom while she sits and watches TV.
Definitely don't want to get tested to find out whether I have it or not.
I used this example in University for context.
Write your name down on a piece of paper and then try doing the same thing while constantly shaking your arm.
Something as simple as writing your name or dialing a telephone become nearly impossible tasks.
Anything with “encephalitis” in it is a massive no from me, dawg.
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