FND Diagnosis Followed by ALS and Metastatic Cancer
Reddit Stories
Social media
A Reddit user, u/derangedmacaque, has documented a striking medical history in which progressive neurological symptoms were attributed to Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) for approximately two years before the patient later reported receiving a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
The account is the patient's own description of events and has not been independently verified through medical records. However, the user's public Reddit history provides a chronology of progressive symptoms, increasing disability and subsequent diagnoses.
On 31 January 2026, the user posted in r/disability under the title "Finding out this week that my FND diagnosis was not accurate and I have an ALS diagnosis".
In that post, the patient described having spent approximately two years being treated as having FND while progressively losing function. They reported that by the time of the ALS diagnosis they could no longer walk normally, had developed severe impairment of one hand, had experienced repeated falls and had suffered significant injuries.
The patient subsequently described the ALS as already being at a late stage. A later reference to their story described them as using a power wheelchair and reporting that they had been given a 90% chance of surviving only nine months.
The story became still more serious in May 2026. The patient reported that doctors had also discovered bladder cancer, which they described as metastatic.
In a post to r/FND on 14 May 2026, titled "Unfortunately, I found out that on top of my doctors missing my ALS for two years while they attributed my symptoms to FND they also missed metastatic bladder cancer", the patient directly connected the delay in identifying these conditions with symptoms having been attributed to FND.
The significance of the account is not merely that another diagnosis was eventually found. According to the patient, serious progressive disease went unrecognised for approximately two years while their neurological deterioration was being attributed to FND. By the time ALS was diagnosed, they reported substantial and irreversible loss of function.
This is precisely why continued investigation matters when a patient diagnosed with FND develops progressive, unexplained or changing symptoms. An FND label should not become an endpoint that causes subsequent deterioration to be interpreted through the same diagnosis without reconsideration.
The later discovery of metastatic bladder cancer further reinforces the broader problem described by the patient: once symptoms had been placed within an FND framework, serious disease was, according to their account, missed alongside it.
Video and first-person updates
The patient's Reddit history also contains video updates showing and discussing their condition. These are particularly useful because they allow the patient to describe the progression and consequences of the diagnostic delay in their own words.
Posts and video updates from u/derangedmacaque on Reddit
Sources
Full public Reddit history of u/derangedmacaque
Note: This summary is based on the patient's publicly available Reddit posts. FND Nope has not reviewed the patient's medical records and therefore cannot independently verify the diagnoses, clinical findings or precise chronology described by the patient.
Please note: This post discusses an account shared publicly on social media. The person's medical history and diagnosis have not been independently verified. We report what they said and link to the original source where possible.