Have you had / got a major illness, signs of which you noticed way before you went to the doctors with more obvious symptoms. What were those signs?

I would think that each serious illness has it's own symptoms.

My own brush with relatively serious illness started with swollen ankles, of all things.

Good grief, you don't want to start a thread like this. You're going to have the hypochondriacs rushing to the GP at the first sign of a headache thinking they've got a brain tumour. You might cause a lot of unnecessary worry at least.

Really, the symptoms of major illnesses can be different for different people, and can be nothing more than minor aches and pains. Usually they're symptoms of only a minor illness like a cold.

I have to agree with Hecate....

One of the biggest problems with the Internet is how easy it's made people to mis-diagnose a pulled muscle as something that is normally only contracted by the indiginous people of the Upper Volta.

I know someone who was advised not to even try looking up what they had on the Internet, because there are two types of the condition. One is a benign growth that causes no problems and is easily removed, and the other is invariably fatal within a few years.

And of course, both have the same initial symptoms. :)