People Are Sharing The Early Signs Of Cancer They Wish They Hadn’t Ignored, And Let This Be A Sign To Go Get Checked

No one wants to be diagnosed with or go through the physical and psychological toll of cancer. Which is why, sometimes, it’s easier to ignore symptoms, explain them away, or just wish they’d clear up on their own. In the moment, ignorance can feel like bliss, but in reality, it could be costing you your health.

But a cancer diagnosis isn’t always a death sentence, especially when it’s caught early. On Reddit, people shared the early signs of cancer they wished they or a loved one had paid attention to sooner. Their stories are a powerful reminder that if something doesn’t feel right, get it checked out (and if a doctor dismisses your concerns, don’t hesitate to seek a second opinion):

Note: The following includes real accounts of early cancer symptoms. While these stories can evoke fear or anxiety (we all know the WebMD anxiety hole), the intention is not to alarm, but to encourage body awareness and self-advocacy, especially when symptoms go on longer than they should.

1.“I had blood in my stool. Doctors kept saying it was hemorrhoids. Stage 4 colon cancer at 31.”

—bubba24

2.“I just wish that my loved one had gotten the recommended colon cancer screening when they turned 50 instead of skipping it and then ignoring some pretty intense symptoms. When they finally got a scan, they were diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and died 4 months later. I also wish they hadn’t trusted faux medicine and woo more than science and medicine. Maybe they would still be here. Preventative health screening saves lives.”

—okay1BelieveYou

3.“Just feeling blahhhhhh and night sweats. It was July 1985, and I didn’t get it checked out until Sep ’85. I nearly died from advanced testicular cancer; it was a wild ride with 4 months of chemo and a year of recuperation. Having a ’40 Years of Being Alive’ party in December this year.”

—stueynz

4.“A friend of mine noticed a small lump in her breast. She was breastfeeding her infant, so she figured it was a clogged duct. A few months later, she had it checked out when it didn’t go away. By then, it was stage 4. She didn’t make it.”

—Opening-Interest747

5.“Malaise. I felt like crap all the time. Chronic lower back pain, fatigue, constipation, and knowing something was wrong. My bloodwork was normal, and I didn’t have night sweats — no ‘standard’ indicators for what I had. And when I would say something was really wrong, doctors would point to my normal bloodwork and say that if something was wrong, it would show up there. It was stage 4 lymphoma when it was finally caught. I’m in remission, almost 3 years.”

—Logical-Horse-6413

6.“For my Nan, it was the sudden aggression from her dog. They took it to the vets, asking why it was suddenly growling at her all the time, and they told her to go to the doctors. Stage 1 bladder cancer. No symptoms at all. She made a full recovery, and we got another 11 years with her. I owed that dog everything.”

—Ocelotstar

7.“My mom had lower back pain. She thought it was a result of a former injury. Turns out it was likely caused by the cancer.”

—Independent-Day-6458

8.“My mom had trouble with discharge from her nipple as well as inversion. Fucking doctor said it was a rash. She got a mammogram anyway. They found two forms of breast cancer (infiltrating ductal carcinoma and Paget’s disease).”

“Later, she was having severe back pain. The doctors had generally just been treating the pain. I insisted on a scan to check for a kidney stone. Instead, they found cancer in her liver. It was Mother’s Day. It looks like the breast cancer, which we thought we had gotten in time, had metastasized to her liver (and, we would find out later, her bones near the liver). She was dead in a little over three months.”

—TheUnknown285

9.“That annoying cough that just won’t go away. I’ve heard so many stories of people getting fed up with a random cough that came out of nowhere and kept lingering for months. They finally go to the doctor to find out it’s cancer and maybe even in an advanced stage…ugh.”

—ParamedicOk1986

10.“I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma as a teenager. I had no idea that relentless, extremely itchy legs at night could be a symptom of my kind of cancer. I should have known something was up when I was bringing forks and pocket knives to my legs to ease the itch, and it still didn’t work.”

“Thankfully, technology and science are great, and a previously extremely fatal disease now has an over 90% cure rate for early-stage disease. Seven years cancer-free this year! Still deal with health-related anxiety and PTSD, though 😩 I still don’t feel safe in my body.”

—sabrinatie

11.“My dear friend had breast cancer, had a mastectomy and radiation, all good. Then, a few years later, she started having terrible neck pain. Doctors sent her to physical therapy and a chiropractor, but no one put 2+2 together until she had a stroke, and they found it was a tumor that had spread to her neck/spine. Once you’ve had cancer, any new health symptoms should be assessed with that in mind.”

—shugersugar

12.“I worked in gynecologic oncology and handled all of our referrals. Ovarian cancer presents as abdominal pain, constipation, fatigue, and bloating. This is often overlooked by a lot of physicians. Unfortunately, most patients are not diagnosed until Stage 3 or 4, as there isn’t really a guideline for screening. Postmenopausal bleeding should not be ignored. Most PMB is endometrial cancer.”

“Cervical cancer scares me more than any other cancer I’ve ever seen. It usually presents as abnormal bleeding and pain during intercourse. It’s also often overlooked. Please GET YOUR PAP SMEARS. I promise you, the treatment for cervical cancer is so much more invasive than a Pap. Unfortunately, my office saw a lot of women who were in advanced stages of all 3 of these cancers because they were totally dismissed by a lot of providers.”

—salty-MA-student

13.“The fatigue. I’d get home from work and take a nap. I’m not a nap person, and even then, I’d still wake up exhausted. I’d do something like scoop the cat litter box, and have to go lie down. I didn’t write for months, and I love to write. I’d forget words in the middle of a sentence. I had to write down processes I did at work every single day because sometimes I’d just…forget what I was doing in the middle of it.”

“I couldn’t sit up in my sewing chair long enough to do anything more than a couple of seams. I thought it was just because of the first six months of constant menstrual bleeding – that my doctor dismissed for the next year and a half as ‘probably long COVID’ – and once my body figured it out, I’d be fine. I passed out standing up too quickly after a nap and ended up in the ER. Then, I was ordered to go see my gynecologist ASAP. Turns out I had endometrial cancer.”

—xirishais

14.“Any mole that changes at all! My sister was diagnosed with melanoma at 22 and died at 30, all because of a mole not getting checked and removed at the first sign.”

“Editing to add: melanoma is so treatable when caught early! And yes, it hurts, it’s itchy, it bleeds, etc. DO NOT ignore any strange marks. Our family went through hell because we never even thought that this would happen. She left behind a 10 and 6-year-old whose lives were destroyed all because of avoidance, fear, and ignorance! If this post helps even one person make that call to the dermatologist, it will be worth it!”

—Either_Ad_565

15.“My mom had a sore that just wouldn’t get better. I saw it when she was in the hospital after we found out she not only had cancer, but it was stage 4, and the end was coming fast. At first, I didn’t think anything of it until I went into her bedroom and saw all the stockpiles of band-aids and patches and asked her how long she’d been dealing with that sore (it was under her armpit, so not visible to the rest of the world), and she said over a year! I just feel like if she’d gone in when she noticed it not healing in the beginning, she maybe would have had a chance to fight it.”

—stefmayer

16.“Swollen lymph nodes. My mom had them for almost two years before getting diagnosed. When she went to the PCP, they told her the nodes were just sticking out because she was skinny. Also, a cough that wouldn’t go away. Coughing up blood, weight loss (all of this right before her diagnosis), weird variations in blood counts (high WBC and low RBC/hemoglobin, high blood cell size, etc).”

“It was breast cancer in her bone marrow, caught at stage 4. All of her mammograms were clear. She had a rare subtype called lobular carcinoma (10-15% of breast cancers). It isn’t always seen on mammograms (around 30% are not visible because of the single-file way the cancer cells grow). If you have dense breast tissue, getting an ultrasound or MRI could be life-saving. She fought it for 4 years, and she was only 53 when she passed. I know she would want her story to help someone.”

—itsjustasupercutofus

17.“Unexpected weight loss. It seemed like a good thing at first, but it turned out to be a major red flag. I wish we had looked into it sooner.”

—HelpfulBackground09

And finally, to end on a light note, here’s a story sharing the value in getting things checked, even if you wanna feel like the tough guy:

18.“Just to add a little brightness in such a dark topic: My dad got up to pee in the middle of the night and saw blood in his urine. He thought it was def weird but went back to bed. The next morning’s valve release produced no blood/redness, and he chalked it up to no big deal and went to work. My dad is definitely one of those ‘tough guys’ who only go to the doctor if he has a limb hanging off, etc. But he brought it up to my mom and me a day later, and we made him go.”

“It was bladder cancer. But bladder cancer has a >90% success rate if caught early, which it was. The doctor told us basically the only time that cancer is fatal is when people do the exact same thing as my dad (see blood once and brush it off). He had to go through surgery and treatment, and has been cancer-free for 10+ years.”

—Rhynosaurus

Some entries have been edited for length and/or clarity.