A cancer diagnosis is a scary thing. One day your life is going along normally, then suddenly everything changes. The earlier you get diagnosed, the better off you will be. These people share the weirdest signs that tipped them off to visit the doctor.

Fooling Around

“I was fooling around in a mall as a kid. So My dad grabbed me by the neck to make me behave. He felt a lump on my neck and immediately began to get nervous. We went to the doctor the next day, caught the cancer before it spread and was able to surgically remove it about a month later. Got super lucky.”

Not A Blocked Mammary Gland

“My sister noticed a small painful lump in her breast shortly after having her second child. Doctor diagnosed a blocked mammary gland. A couple weeks later it still wasn’t gone. Again doc said blocked gland. Months later it’s still not gone and she insists on getting a second opinion. Stage 3 breast cancer. Double mastectomy immediately followed by months of agonizing radiation and chemo only to find out it’s now stage four. She’s been stable for a few years but now it’s spreading again and we don’t know how long we have with her. Trying to be as positive as possible.”

The Headache That Wouldn’t Go Away

“My 33 year old husband was diagnosed with inoperable glioblastoma (most aggressive brain cancer) in January 2019, when he was 31. What caused him to get a check, was persistent headache that didn’t go away with paracetamols and sleep. We discovered the tumours after taking an MRI.”

Not Fat and Not Allergies

“My head and neck area became very swollen. At first I thought I was just getting fat, so I worked out a lot and ate better. This did not help. I also went to a local clinic and they thought it might be an allergic reaction and gave me steroids, which also didn’t help. The thing that finally made me go to the emergency room and not leave until I had an answer is that I started to develop unexplained bruises on my chest. Turns out I had a huge tumor in my chest which had grown around my heart and was compressing the superior vena cava so blood couldn’t flow back down from my head. Not great!”

An Unrelated Lump

“Funnily enough, it was a totally unrelated lump. “Nope, that lump is fine, just a lipoma. However, we found another lump in the corner of your x-ray and we need to biopsy it”.”

The Not-So-Subtle Stroke

“My mum had something pretty close to this. Had a stroke, so lots of scans, one of them just caught the edge of something. Tennis ball sized mass in her chest. Whack. Turned out it wasn’t anything particularly nasty but it seemed crazy she never knew it was there.” –