38 Cancer Survivors Share The Unexpected Symptoms That Made Them See A Doctor
Prevention is always better than cure, particularly with potentially life-threatening diseases. But when dealing with an illness as tricky to spot as cancer is, early detection may be a challenge.
Apparently, symptoms may manifest in the oddest ways, some of which can be easily dismissed as nothing serious. However, as these people would attest, listening to their gut or someone else’s may have saved their lives, or at the very least, prevented them from years of suffering.
A few Reddit users shared the unusual cancer symptoms they experienced and fortunately caught early on. Hopefully, none of you will ever need to refer back to this list, but it's worth knowing these valuable pieces of information.
#1
Work buddy suddenly said “yo man, your neck looks fat”
Me going wth man that’s so rude
Him going no really it looks fatter than before
Me going wth man that’s like a double edged insult
Him going no really bro maybe you should see a doc or something
So i did.
Thyroid cancer
Work bro caught it at stage ZERO
Didnt even need chemo. Docs just removed the gland. On lifelong thyroxine but that’s the best outcome really
Work bro and I still keep in contact 15 years later.
Image credits: Brynhild
#2
My symptoms were a feeling of fullness in my bottom when sitting down and bright red blood in my stool when wiping. I was 40 years old at the time and visited my doctor right away. She dismissed it as hemorrhoids.
Within 2 months, my stools had changed shape and I started to lose weight. I reached back out to my doctor who referred me to a gastroenterologist. From onset of my symptoms to when I was able to finally see a specialist was 6 months.
They ordered a colonoscopy but it was initially denied by my health insurer. My GI doctor appealed and had to move the procedure to a hospital before it was approved. The day of my colonoscopy I had lost 45 lbs since first seeing my doctor 6 months before.
When I woke up from the colonoscopy, my gastroenterologist told me they found a 7cm mass that was likely cancer. They took biopsies, and a couple of days later those were confirmed as malignant. I had blood work and a series of imaging over the next month and was eventually diagnosed with stage 4 rectal cancer with metastasis to the pelvic organs, lungs, and one adrenal gland.
This was in May 2025. I'm almost through with my first phase of treatment, 8 rounds of FOLFOXIRI chemotherapy. I start round 7 tomorrow and should finish round 8 the first week of November. My following treatment after that will be 25-35 rounds of chemoradiation.
As of today, no cancer DNA can be detected in my blood, my primary tumor is now undetectable through imaging, and all my metastisized nodes have shrunk by more than 50%.
Image credits: LogRevolutionary1584
#3
I was a lot more tired than usual and assumed my depression had returned, so I scheduled a visit. No other symptoms.
Before the scheduled visit happened, I'd donated blood. I received a call from the Red Cross physician, who told me I needed labs done again ASAP. (As a medical transcriptionist at the time, once he mentioned blast cells, I knew what those labs would be looking to confirm.)
Sure enough, after the requested lab results came back and I'd gotten a bone marrow biopsy via oncology, I was diagnosed with CML (leukemia).
Since I'd donated blood only two months prior without incident, the leukemia was caught really early. (I'm now a 12-year survivor.).
Image credits: Stenfam2628
#4
My 16 year old son showed me his bleeding gums one morning. I thought it was weird and got him a dental appointment the next day. At lunch he showed me purple freckle-like spots that showed up on his feet. I called the triage nurse at our family clinic to see if this was a dental thing or a doctor thing. She told me to take him to the ER immediately.
I did, and he was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia and transferred by ambulance to the Children’s hospital an hour away.
They slammed chemo in him immediately because he was high risk with a wildly high white blood cell count and had disseminating intravascular coagulation, meaning he was internally bleeding out, because he didn’t have any platelets. He was in in-patient for 17 days and got 50 blood product transfusions. Most of them platelets.
After 9 months with 4 cycles of 30 days of arsenic IV chemo that took 2 hours Monday-Friday, and paired with trentinoin chemo pills, he was in molecular remission and beat it. He’s been off therapy since the middle of June. He spent his summer hiking, fishing, and camping, like nothing ever happened. He’s back in school with straight As and aiming for college scholarships to pursue wildlife conservation.
Image credits: SpaceSparkle
#5
My husband started having neck pain which he attributed to the heavy bullet-proof vest they had just added to his required uniform at work. Got significantly worse over a few weeks and his hands started shaking so he had to take a leave from work (can’t handle weapons with shaking hands). Doctor kept dismissing his pain as arthritis and said physical therapy and ibuprofen were the cure. After 3 months of this I finally refused to leave the doctor’s office until an MRI was ordered. It showed a large tumor at the base of his skull that had fractured his neck at C2 and C3. Only the tumor was holding his neck together. Biopsy showed high grade metastatic sarcomatoid carcinoma with unknown primary site. Two chemo treatments and 10 radiation treatments later they scanned him again and found the primary site - large tumor in his brain. Only then did we learn they had never scanned his head before. The chemo was not one that could cross the blood-brain barrier so it never would have helped. He passed away 2 months later.
Always advocate for yourself and your loved ones. No one else is watching out for us.
Image credits: twink1813
#6
My daughter was diagnosed at 3 years old. She started complaining of a sore head and sore nose, and over the course of 10 days she got really unwell, just really lethargic and started vomiting, but oddly no fever. The no fever thing with all the other symptoms started to really worry me and I took her to hospital. Thankfully they took me seriously and she had a CT scan. They found a tumour in her sphenoid sinus. Five days after going to hospital we had a diagnosis (during that week she had an MRI scan and biopsy via her nose).
She had chemo for 8 months and she is now a healthy 14 year old. And because we’re in Australia her treatment cost is nothing apart from paying for hospital parking.
Image credits: Tygie19
#7
I posted this on a similar thread recently:
I thought I was going through menopause.
My period had always been irregular - I had PID when I was younger - but it was getting more irregular than usual.
I went to see the doctor - he ran a few blood tests, sent me for an ultrasound, said I was too young to be going through menopause and it must be because of my weight.
He never sent me to a gynaecologist - he told me I needed to “say no to the cake and biscuits” and go for a walk in the evening.
Fast forward a year. I start bleeding, and I don’t stop for a month. I go back to the doctor, he again tells me it’s my weight and complications from the PID.
Five months later, I’m still bleeding lightly, on and off. But every day there’s blood.
Then I’m getting groceries out of the car, and I bang my stomach on the tailgate. It hurts a lot.
I take some paracetamol and go to bed. Wake up the next morning, and I’m covered in blood. It’s on the sheets, the doona cover, it’s gone through the underlay to the mattress.
I panic, go to the hospital, and within four hours I’m having an emergency D&C and a blood transfusion.
The biological material from the D&C is sent away to be tested.
Turns out I had endometrial cancer, and it was very likely present 18 months earlier when I first went to see the doctor who told me I needed to lay off the cake and biscuits.
Image credits: FormalMango
#8
About a year before I was diagnosed, I had a sharp pain in my hip so bad it left me doubled over. It only lasted a couple seconds, and only lasted once, so I didn’t follow up.
During a pre op for an unrelated surgery, my doctor found a lump in my breast. She sent me for a mammogram, they kept me for a biopsy, and I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
And the hip pain? That was a tumor setting up shop in my hip. My cancer is metastatic.
I’m No Evidence of Disease as of June, and I’m enjoying it as much as I can.
Image credits: insertcaffeine
#9
Don’t have cancer myself, but my little brother had. He was 15 and started having these grow spurt pains… It’s when we were at a celebratory event of our favourite sports club, and he asked if he could sit down in the middle of 10k jumping and celebrating people, that we knew something was wrong. He was in so much pain he couldn’t stand in that moment.
Next day went to the fysio who then send him to the hospital with our dad. Turned out he had some sort of bone tumor in his upper leg.
It was a rough year for him and the family, but he had a healing miracle- one the doctors couldn’t even explain- and now we celebrated his 22nd birthday last summer 🌟 He’s been cancer free for 5 years 🌟.
Image credits: Kneeling_Angel
#10
I had pain in my bones for about four months and I didn’t do anything about it. Then I noticed my posture was changing. Still did nothing bc my life was busy with work, commuting, kids in high school, and wife who was growing more distant. One day at work I sneezed and broke a rib. The next day I went to the urgent care center. I was there for several hours while they did blood tests. The docs came in and said I need to go to the hospital and start chemo IMMEDIATELY. No going home first for toothbrush and pjs. They said I had about 2 weeks before extreme and fataorgan failure. Chance of surviving a few more months less than 1%. Multiple myeloma - bone marrow cancer. Basically bones dissolve, which causes them to weaken and break. The calcium from bones harms the kidneys and other organs. That was 14 years ago this thanksgiving. I did a bunch of chemo and had a stem cell transplant. I still take expensive medicine each day but am in good shape. Div, I sold everything I had, got kids through college, and now live a simple minimalist lifestyle. I’m content.
Image credits: universal-traveler-2
#11
Nose wouldn’t stop dripping, even while I slept. I’d wake up to a pillow covered in yellow dots. First doctor said it was a polyp and booked a procedure to have it removed. Went for a second opinion who did an x-ray and discovered a very rare 3cm sarcoma on my septum that had grown through a bunch of bone. 5 weeks of radiation followed by surgery and I’m now coming up on 10 years. Can no longer smell and my taste is very limited, but grateful to be alive.
Image credits: fishfishgoose
#12
I'm going to speak on behalf of my sister who is no longer here. My middle sister Connie, was a non smoker, married, had just bought her first home, and waited tables at a restaurant chain . She had two children. She had a dry, nagging cough, went to the doctor, got a chest x-ray and was told everything looked good. Cough continued so 3 months later, she went back. This time, she was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer. She had a lobectomy, such heavy doses of chemo I thought she'd die from it. Proceeded to have scans every couple of months, holding our breath in between results. One year later - metastasized to her brain. Surgery to remove what they could of a tumor in her frontal lobe, followed by radiation. 6 weeks later - tumor is back and bigger than before. My sister says "no more" She passed away at home at age 42. Her little girl was only 5.
Image credits: CindyinMemphis
#13
My first cancer, I turned yellow. Turned out I had type 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma, squeezing the duct from my pancreas and gall bladder (my gall bladder was bad also.) They put stents in the duct, and after chemo I was all better.
6 years later, my neck started swelling, and it was determined I had the same lymphoma problem next to my thyroid (which had also gone bad). They removed one side of the thyroid, but then the other side grew out of control and caused my throat to constrict so much that I couldn't talk or eat. So they removed the other side too. Another round of chemo and I am all better again.
I have since been diagnosed with Follicular Lymphoma, which basically means my lymph nodes can randomly go cancerous if they get stressed. I am waiting for my appendix or spleen or something else to go bad for that to happen.
Wee.
Image credits: Passinonreddit
#14
I usually eat a piece of chocolate at night, like a dessert. When I went to the bathroom that night to shower I noticed my white shirt had brown spots. I thought I dropped chocolate pieces on myself and it melted 🤷🏽 it happens.
Happened a month later, but I hadn’t had chocolate. Wife has a chemistry degree and sprayed hydrogen peroxide on it. It bubbled indicating blood. Rang the hospital and they ran blood tests. Told me it could be a breast tumor or a brain tumor and suggested I get MRIs. I got both MRIs done with contrast in the same week.
Turns out I had both a breast and brain tumor
Image credits: NinjaMcGee
#15
I had a migraine, and then suddenly half of my body went numb and I had bad aphasia. I kept trying to talk but gibberish was coming out of my mouth. The dr in the ER said it was probably just a bad migraine and it was in all likelihood not a big deal. Turns out I have brain, neck, and spine cancer. My meninges are carrying cancer through my CNS :) still here after 4 years.
Image credits: EggsMarshall
#16
Red dot on my arm that never healed. I read on Reddit that someone had a red dot that turned out to be cancer. Scheduled visit to dermatologist and sure enough it was a rooted melanoma. Over 30 stitches later, I’m ok.
Image credits: MyPonyMeeko
#17
Great health but weak pee stream, had to get up multiple times at night to pee. PSA was within normal range but doctor sent me for a MRI. It showed large lesion popped out of prostate. It turned out to be rare aggressive type prostate cancer, Gleason 9 Stage 3a. (found this all out after surgery) Local urologist said I could only have radiation. Went for a second opinion at UC San Diego. Got connected with best urological surgeon in the US. It's now been four years, this month, with undetectable PSA. Not a day of incontinence. Other started working within a year with blue pill. At my house the surgeon ranks somewhere between Jesus and God.
Image credits: Ok_Indication_4873
#18
Shortness of breath and low energy. I thought that it was a resurgence of asthma that I had as a child.
Turns out that I felt that way because my body was severely low on hemoglobin. Pesky leukemia had replaced 92% of my bone marrow with cancer.
That was 18 months ago. Been in full remission since January. Don’t recommend.
Image credits: Baldcatbird
#19
My daughter, 10, was having pain on her left side.
No walk-in clinics, no family doctors in the area. We had to take her to emerge. We took her back over and over, over the course of 6 months. Pain was getting worse. Finally Dec 4 2023, they found a tumour. It was neuroblastoma.
We finished treatment this March. They literally threw everything they had at her. We did chemo, surgery, radiation, stem cell transplant and immunotherapy. She is still on maintenance medication.
However she is now back at school and becoming a normal teenager.
Edit:because I forgot the anger. My daughter's cancer did not have the urine markers. She was misdiagnosed atleast 6 times. Twice we got sent home with UTi meds. First doc told us it was menstrual pain, he asked me "what kind of testing I wanted to do?" then refused to do anything.
The final doc who actually sent us to ultrasound told me "we probably won't find anything" before they found a baseball sized tumour.
Image credits: entwitch
#20
Heavy periods, extreme fatigue, and a smell of rotting flesh. I had uterine cancer that had moved down to the cervix. At first they thought it was cervical but I am HPV negative and the majority of the mass was in the uterus. Pathology confirmed the diagnosis and that they got it all. I went through 3 years of close monitoring. That was 26 years ago.
Image credits: Ohhmegawd
#21
Even more crazy is my oncologist’s story: she had a random pain in her breast. Labs looked good. Mammogram was normal. She saw a bunch of other docs that also said it was nothing. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that it was cancer. So she pressed for a biopsy but then something told her to just get both removed so she ended up having an elective double mastectomy. Cancer in both breast that she caught early. She is so amazing. If I so much as say my eye is twitching, she says “Do you want a scan? Let me send you to the best eye doctor I know. Let’s do this.”.
Image credits: ib4m2es
#22
I'm a diabetic. Routine visit with endocrinologist. Mentioned that I'm constantly cold at night. Like 85 degrees, and I want to sleep under a comforter with the heat on cold.
Had an ultrasound done. Nodule that's.... just right on the border. Biopsy that's... just right on the border. AFIRMA test that showed a 75% chance of it being something. Decided to have surgery to remove the thyroid 10 days ago. Got pathology report back Friday, Thyroid cancer. Good thing, it's all been removed.
Still cold though, but haven't started replacement thyroid pills yet.
Image credits: Sp1dyL1fe
#23
A pea-sized blemish on my skin. My doctor said it was “almost certainly nothing” but, because it hurt when touched, biopsied it “just in case.” Thank God he did. Still had to do chemo, but managed to catch it pretty early.
Image credits: PsychBabe
#24
I had Stage IV pancreatic cancer.
For me, it was some pain in my right side.
I’m not the type to run to the doctor at the first sign of pain, but, for whatever reason, I did go for this.
It’s actually a good thing that I went, as the pain disappeared about two weeks later. Had I not gone to the doctor then, I would probably not have known about the cancer for another six months to a year.
In July, after over two years of chemo, I had surgery and my tumors were removed. I’m currently NED (no evidence of disease).
Image credits: ZevSteinhardt
#25
At the gym, sitting on the ground, ready to do a straight leg rope climb like I had been doing every day for months and this one day there was an unusual internal tug deep in my pelvis… Not a pain, but just a new sensation. Over the next week, the sensation returned every time I went to climb the rope. The sensation did not correspond to any body parts I could think of (I’m a physician) and I went to see my primary, telling them “something‘s not right.“ A CT scan demonstrated metastatic prostate cancer.
Image credits: an_enduser
#26
My cousin had a kind of numbness in her fingers. Thought it was a pinched nerve, but physical therapy and cortisone shots provided no relief. The ydid some imaging, then more imaging, then diagnosed her with an aggressive form of brain cancer. Diagnosed June, gone before Thanksgiving.
Image credits: Eeeegah
#27
Itchy skin, night sweats, coughing, weight-loss and lack of appetite. Was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma in January 2024, relapsed six months after finishing treatment and just completed a stem cell transplant in August. Keeping my fingers crossed that kicked it.
Image credits: k_doodle
#28
Absolutely nothing. Mom was diagnosed four months prior and my doctor decided to send me to a high-risk clinic for a genetic workup. Turns out I also had breast cancer. 🤷♀️.
Image credits: Eggs-N-Ham
#29
Was teaching in front of a class and a para noticed a lump on my throat. Thyroid cancer, both sides. That was more than 15 years ago. Still doing ok.
Image credits: Tbjkbe
#30
Two years cancer free. I had no symptoms. Routine mammogram found a small tumor. 0.5 cm.
Image credits: carinosa34
#31
It felt like there was a hair stuck in the back of my throat. Turns out it was a small tumor on the back of my tonsil - about the size of a pencil eraser. I was stage 2, with lymph node involvement.
Image credits: Grundy9999
#32
I found lumps in my neck, had night sweats. Turned out, it was stage 4 hodgkin's lymphoma. This was 6 years ago. .
Image credits: Anakin_Sandwalker
#33
I have Stage 3 Hodgkin’s and my symptoms were fatigue, night sweats, and a dull stomach ache that wouldn’t go away.
I’m a teacher and got diagnosed in the spring, so the fatigue I attributed to end of the school year teacher tired. The night sweats were weird, but I guess I didn’t think about it too much. The dull stomach ache is what made me go in. I just had a feeling something wasn’t right. I wasn’t expecting cancer!
Most people get diagnosed with lymphomas because a visible lymph node (neck, armpits, groin) is swollen. You have lymph nodes internally as well, which can make a diagnosis harder if you don’t know the other symptoms. My cancer was found in my abdomen, mostly surrounding my kidneys and along my esophagus.
Hodgkin’s is thankfully very responsive to chemo, so I’m expected to be in remission by Thanksgiving.
Image credits: SD6_sydneybristow
#34
My mom had bouts of constipation with abdominal pain followed by diarrhea that continued cycling and getting worse each time. It happened gradually and she kept hiding it and trying to just power through it. Eventually, she finally decided to get it checked out.
After one idiot doctor, an attempted colonoscopy, an ambulance ride, and emergency surgery, she was diagnosed metastatic (stage 4) colon cancer.
Image credits: ibwitmypigeons
#35
Sharp pain in my armpit, like someone had stabbed me. Completely out of the blue. Turned out to be metastatic malignant melanoma that took 5 years to metastasize from a primary tumor that was removed from my shoulder to my lymph nodes.
Image credits: TillStar17
#36
Had a sudden bleed like a period, after menopause. I was at my gynecologist’s office less than 48 hours later, got a biopsy, and the pathology showed a small, malignant uterine polyp.
I had no prior gynecological issues at all. None. I cannot emphasize how out of the blue this was.
The cancer (a rare adenosarcoma) ended up being low-grade, and malignant cells were only inside the small polyp with no spread at all, so I was Stage 1A. The surgery, a hysterectomy with all the associated parts also removed, was considered curative. No radiation or chemo needed.
Not a day goes by where I don’t thank my lucky stars for how fortunate I was under the circumstances.
Image credits: DaisyCutter9999
#37
The only symptom I had were swollen lymph nodes on the right side of my neck. I put off getting it checked out until the lymph nodes formed this huge mass at the top of my neck that literally stuck out at least an inch. At 21 I was diagnosed with stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It was in both sides of my neck, both armpits, spleen, and back. Happy to report I’ve been in remission for 3 years!
Image credits: EntertainmentThin662
#38
38 years old, No symptoms. I was actually feeling very healthy and fit. I went to the doctor for an unrelated reason and whilst there they said I had an overdue smear. It escalated through to Stage 1b Cervical Cancer. The crazy thing was I had a smear about 16 months prior that was absolutely fine with no HPV detected or anything. The doctor wanted two smears one year apart because I had lived overseas prior to this and I didn’t have a history of smears on record and they needed to establish that. They caught it so early they think the cone biopsy took out the whole tumour. By the time I had a radical hysterectomy, there was no cancer left in any of the tissue tested. Now it feels like such a blip on the radar that I feel like I can’t claim that I had cancer. Get your smears!
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