Scariest one was probably when I got mono. I know that sounds silly but here's what happened. Over the summer I was playing soccer with a buddy of mine and I made it about 5 or 10 minutes into kicking the ball around when I had to stop and sit in the grass. I told him that I had been feeling extremely tired the past few weeks and that I felt like I wanted to just pass out right there in the grass from exhaustion. I was like this isn't normal, something has to be wrong. Because I was outdoors a lot I was worried it might be lyme's disease and I didn't notice the tick bite or something.
So I go to the doctor, he's like okay we will do some blood work tests and stuff, see what's going on. I head into my internship and I'm really dragging. I can barely get anything done, just so exhausted. I get a phone call (rarely get phone calls). I pick it up and it's the doctors office. They ask if it's me, I say yes. The receptionist immediately goes "are you okay? Are you in pain?" I'm like, uh no, not really, just really run down. She goes "okay, we need you to come in" and I'm like "well I'm kind of busy at my internship, could I come in tomorrow first thing?" and she straight up goes "no, you need to come in today. There's an issue with your liver, you need to come in now." so I tell my internship I have to leave, the doc said it couldn't wait.
That half hour drive was incredibly stressful. I've had quite a few young people die in my life by that point, so I'm very much already aware of my own mortality and that human beings are not these special "main characters" of some grand story. You can die from dumb bullshit at any time.
I get to the doctors office and it's pretty busy. I walk up and tell her I'm here, she immediately gets up and walks me into a room. Skipped the line entirely. I'm in there for about 15 seconds and the doctor comes in, and immediately goes "are you in pain?" sounding extremely concerned. I'm like no... Should I be? And he goes, "we got the lab work back, your liver enzymes, when I worked in the ER this was the kind of numbers we would see with acute liver failure. Lay down" he starts poking and prodding. I'm like no, no pain from that. He's asks if I'm sure, I'm sure.
Now keep in mind, this doctor is a bit of a crabby guy. Like, he was always thorough and I knew he cared, but he didn't have much bedside manner. I'd been going to him for years because I got a good vibe from him even if he was a bit grumpy. I had never seen him so concerned or worried in all the years I had seen him. He tells me okay, go straight to the hospital, we're getting you an ultrasound. He stressed that after the ultrasound, if I experienced any sort of pain or anything unusual, go straight to the ER, no hesitation. He also says we're making an appointment for a specialist, he knows a guy, he's going to call him and get an appointment with him for tomorrow because by the time the ultrasound is done it would be too late that day to get me over to him.
So I ge the ultrasound and then I head back home. The next day I go to the appointment and that doc orders specific blood work to be done. I do that and I head back home. Maybe a day or two later he calls me up and tells me it's mono. Apparently in rare circumstances, EBV (the virus that causes mono) can cause acute liver failure. So he goes over what were going to do, what we will keep an eye on, but for now we will just wait and see how things play out.
The very next day I came down with all the classic mono symptoms. It was like having the cold and flu for almost a month. It took a good 6 month for my liver to recover and get back to slightly elevated enzyme levels.
Overall pretty scary experience. Partially because I'd never seen doctor's so gravely concerned before in person. But it wasn't without cause. Acute liver failure can kill you in days.