I'll follow up my own post with anecdata rather than edit. My father was pretty good at giving differential diagnoses. He always said, "everyone lives, you jus

I'll follow up my own post with anecdata rather than edit. My father was pretty good at giving differential diagnoses. He always said, "everyone lives, you just need to figure out what they're hiding and not focus on the why." I laughed when "everyone lies" became a meme on "House MD". The even more sardonic truth is that my father even lied after being diagnosed with a bad version of pancreatic cancer! (squamous cell carcinoma of pancreas) They asked him how much he drank and said, "A little bit, not too much." I stopped him and said, "Dad, you drink at least a bottle of wine every night." Oncologist replied, "OK heavy drinker". When asked about smoking he said, "No I haven't smoked since I left the Air Force 50 years ago." I corrected him and said, "Dad, you smoke at least a cigar a night while drinking. That's a lot of second-hand smoke." Oncologist replied, "OK, smoker." Everyone lies, and doctors make especially bad patients. Next bit is personal, about me. One day I had a headache. Slightly off from a normal headache, hard to explain. Not wildly off like a migraine...just slightly. I rarely get headaches. I didn't think too much of it but left work to go home and rest. Two days later, I woke up with the same headache. No drinking the night before (honestly). Said, hrmm that's weird. I'm going in to get checked out. Long story short, I have intracranial hypertension and it's starting to manifest in new symptoms (exact cause unknown). It's good that they caught it now because it can lead to irreversible blindness if not caught. My point is, even big things can have minor symptoms -- even if they're "everyday" symptoms. (Pancreatic cancer symptoms are upset stomach)