Doctors Share The Most Heartbreaking Diagnosis They Ever Made

Working in healthcare can be very rewarding. But it can also be heartbreaking.

There's no escaping the fact humans get sick or old and we all eventually die. Having to deliver bad news to a patient is often upsetting for the person delivering the news as well as the recipient.

Reddit user Fancy-Advice-2793 asked:

"Doctors of Reddit what is your most heartbreaking diagnosis?"

Enamel Hypoplasia

"Dentist here. 18-year-old kid needed either dentures or $30k for a full mouth of crowns. He had genetic enamel hypoplasia leading to soft enamel and his teeth had eroded to little nubs."

"When I presented this info to him and his parents, they laughed at the idea of spending that much on his teeth and said 'well, looks like we are letting them fall out and getting you dentures later'. He seemed genuinely distraught."

"I felt pretty sad about the case, so I called them a few days later offering to do the case as charity and I would charge nothing. They said they would consider it, but never called me back."

"I tried following up and they didn’t return my calls. This was a year ago and I think about it a lot."

~ DocLime

Avoidable Accidents

"I do a lot of trauma care and telling parents that their kid died due to stupid decisions is no fun."

"Lately we had a lot of kids die from climbing on top of trains and getting electrocuted, so please stop doing that."

~ AustrianReaper

Brain Cancer

"Junior on an ED ward."

"My boss gives me an easy case to start off for a man who comes in with a headache and slow speech."

"I learn the man recently had his daughter die from cancer. Boss thinks it’s depression."

"Examining him, something is definitely off. I order a ct scan thinking it could be a stroke."

"Brain cancer."

"Dead within one year, leaving behind his wife and 18-year-old son."

"Life is precious."

~ Frostivus

Glioblastoma

"30 y/o female came in with some mild difficulty walking and sensory deficits in her legs. We MRI her brain and spine to see these ovoid enhancing lesions in her brainstem and cervical spine.

"She had recently emigrated from an underdeveloped country, making us think this was an odd presentation of an infection like tuberculosis. We performed a lumbar puncture and don’t see any signs of infection or inflammation, so we have to enlist the help of neuro-infectious disease experts from other institutions to no avail."

"Over the 2-3 weeks she was in the hospital, she goes from walking the halls to a quadriplegic. Eventually one of the lesions expands to a point where we can reasonably safely biopsy it. The biopsy comes back as glioblastoma."

"These types of tumors rarely present in the spine and brainstem, and there’s nothing we can do to help her. She discharged home on hospice and died a couple weeks later."

~ Trisomy__21

Car Accident

"I used to be a dispatcher for a large university. Just before Christmas, a student was in a horrible car crash and was placed on life support in the university hospital. His family was told to come quickly to say goodbye, as he didn't have much time left."

"The grandparents got there first and were waiting in the hospital room with their grandchild. Unfortunately, while the parents were rushing to the hospital, they lost control of their car on an ice patch. They crashed the car and were both pronounced dead at the scene."

"So I dispatched the officer to notify the grandparents, who were attending to their dying grandchild, that their son and daughter-in-law were just killed."

"Even the notifying officer wasn't okay for a few days after that. It's awful, but sh*t like that happens."

~ PsychedelicGoat42

Orphan

"I'm an anesthesiologist and I had to talk with a patient about anesthesiology risks."

"The patient was an orphan, 11 years old. Normally I talk to parents when it comes to children. But this one gutted me cause I read the patient's documents and her dad had an accident at work and is mentally impaired and her mother left her to go back to her home country."

"She came with 2 workers from the orphanage who were hardly 20. Basically 3 kids in my eyes."

"Until this point I never thought about orphans needing medical care cause it never dawned on me. But god damn I needed a pause after this."

~ cold_hoe

Leukaemia

"I work in rural medicine now, but prior to that was in haematology. Clinical and lab. So many a shitty leukaemia diagnosis."

"Plenty of young and old dead adults. But perhaps one of the most heart breaking things I had to do was when I worked in the lab."

"I got a call in the middle of the night from one of our scientists with a blood sample they'd received from a rural doctor and had arrived quite late. From a 5-year-old I think."

"But when it went through the machine it had some worrying counts, so the scientist had a look at it in the middle of the night rather than in the morning. They were concerned enough to get me to take a look and emailed me a bunch of photos taken of the slides. "

"Absolutely raging leukaemia. Cancerous cell counts massive. Normal cell counts absolutely tanked. High risk of them just spontaneously bleeding in their gut or brain. Something that had to be dealt with right now."

"But the doctor who requested the bloods couldn't be contacted. So I tried to call the parents as this kid needs to not just be in hospital ASAP, they need transfusions and to be on a plane to fly about 1000km to a specialised paeds hospital ASAP."

"Alas, I couldn't get the parents on the phone either. So, i called their local ambulance. I sent them at about 1am to go bash on their door until someone answers and take that kid to the local hospital."

"In the mean time, I'd be arranging their medical flight to the city. Got all the people along that chain on board. All of that went as smoothly as one could hope."

"But it broke my heart to think how traumatic that would have been for that family. It's bad enough to learn your kid has such a terrible disease, but to learn by red and blue lights and someone bashing on your door at 1am..."

~ gpolk

Pediatric Cancer

"Most patients in the pediatric oncology ward really."

"I remember my first time on that ward about half a year into my internship, I was tasked with putting an IV access in and then to take a blood sample from this young and long time patient of that ward, like many ped oncology patients there, to send to the lab to get new blood to transfuse for her."

"To preface, putting an IV access is already much harder on kids than it is for adults, and if the kids are cachectic, super young and their veins have been poked at for years and years for treatment, then that task gets exponentially difficult."

"At that point I was used to kids who would cry and tear the room down when they even glanced at a needle."

"This ward was different. Me being more or less a very green/fresh doctor at the time must have seemed to be noticeably anxious because this patient looked me dead in the eyes and in the calmest manner said:"

"'Doc, don't worry. I'm not gonna fight you. This is just my life. Get it over with'."

"She took the stick to her vein emotionless then went right back to scrolling through on her iPad. That was when I understood her words, that normal life for them included getting needle sticks from unfamiliar doctors and nurses, hospital beds, having to hear other babies cry all day everyday."

"All doctors get desensitized to some degree; it's part of the job. But to know that those kids get numbed to all this truly broke something in my heart."

~ Tadayaki

Cancer

"My dad is an oncologist. He told me about a woman who declined treatment because her husband threatened to leave her if she lost her hair. He was the only family she had and she didn't want to lose him."

"My dad tried to reason with her. He asked if he could talk to her husband (who didn't come to the few appointments she attended)."

"But she refused and disappeared for about six months. Then she came back because she had begun to physically decline and her husband had...left her."

"She wanted treatment, since she had 'nothing left to lose' at that point. But the disease was too far gone and she didn't make it. She was 25."

That's definitely one of the more devastating and infuriating stories he's told me. Arguably the worst part is that this isn't as isolated an incident as you might think."

"The whole reason my dad told me the story is because someone told a very similar story on Reddit. I mentioned it to my dad and I said, 'I think it must be fake though, no one is THAT evil'."

"Which is when he told me he'd seen it before, and more than once."

~ midnightsunofabitch

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease

"60 something retired nurse presented with rapidly progressive cognitive changes and odd movements. Workup revealed she had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease."

"She was with it enough to understand the diagnosis and simply cried to her husband saying, 'I’m sorry for what I’m about to put you through'. She discharged on hospice and passed after a few weeks."

~ Trisomy__21

Lymphoma

"When my ex-mother in law was given 6 months to live with lymphoma, there was no one who spoke Spanish so they told my ex-wife when she was 6 years old to explain to her mother she had cancer and only 6 months left to live."

"The only good part is that that was 35 years ago and she is still alive."

~ Independent-Bike8810

Ovarian Cancer

"Not a Dr, but an ER nurse. I absolutely hate when we find cancer in someone who comes in due to some vague symptoms. Whether it be blood in the urine that turns into bladder cancer, difficulty urinating that turns into prostate cancer, or we do a belly CT and see nodules on the lungs."

"The worst part is we don’t know 100% if this mass/ spot is cancer, we can just tell you about it and have you follow up. I can’t imagine the stress waiting to know for sure/how bad it is."

"My worst was a woman in her early 30s who had just beat breast cancer. She was a widow with no kids and her only parent had recently died of ovarian cancer."

"Saw her for abdominal pain and on the CT found an ovarian mass. When we told her, she just looked so alone and devastated."

"I am not a hugger, but she was definitely my longest hug to a patient in my career."

~ Comfortable-Coat9364

Uterine Cancer

"19-year-old female had to have a complete removal of her uterus—Total Abdominal Hysterectomy with Bilateral Salpingo-Oophorectomy (TAHBSO)—because of an aggressive cancer."

"She died on the table."

~ marsen23

Brain Tumor

"ER RN here... 18-year-old came in with a sinus infection."

"Diagnosis was inoperable brain tumor with a life span of less than six months."

"That was 10 years ago and I still think about that kid and his family...."

~ RubyScarlett88

Patau Syndrome

"Patau Syndrome."

"There’s a group of genetic defects called trisomies in where people have extra chromosomes."

"Most people are familiar with Trisomy 21 (Down’s syndrome). But there are others like Trisomy 18 (Edwards) and Trisomy 13 (Patau)."

"Children born with Patau Syndrome don't have much hope of surviving for too long even with medical treatment. Longest I’ve seen was barely over two months in the Neonatal (newborn) ICU."

"There’s been reported cases in where the patient lives for as long as 19 years of age, but those are very rare."

"In most countries people are given the choice to abort these babies to save everyone from the prolonged pain and heartache. Abortion is illegal in my country though, so I get to see the mom try her best to bring to term a baby with a death sentence."

~ Roldolor

We're so grateful to the medical community for the support they give us when we're in need.

It cannot be easy being the ones to break such bad news to families on a regular basis.

But we're certainly glad these medical miracle works do the job when we need them most.