Man told he wouldn't live to see Christmas shocked to learn he wasn't actually dying

A man received jaw-dropping news after being told that he had a rare and incurable medical condition.

Fredrik Bergstrom was told by not one but two separate doctors that he had a condition called ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

ALS, short for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a form of motor-neurone disease and leads to progressive degeneration of nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain.

Fredrik went for tests after he began to limp and had numbness in his foot for no apparent reason.

And it only took a ten minute examination for his doctor to inform him he had the condition.

Fredrik, 51, told CBC: "He did a 10-minute examination and then he literally teared up and hugged me and he said, 'Fredrik, this is ALS.'"

He recalled how his doctor told him: "We're at the end of the line."

Things only got worse, with the doctor going on to describe how there would be a 'catastrophical neurological breakdown' and 'rapid progression ALS.'

Fredrik said: "So now not only am I dying, I'm dying in the fast lane. Everything is moving incredibly fast."

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Fredrik was told that it was unlikely he would be alive to see Christmas this year.

Things began to move quickly after that, with Fredrik having to set his affairs in order including shutting down his business.

There was also the heartbreaking process of telling his and his wife Carla's two daughters about the diagnosis.

He said: "We had to tell friends and family. I had to tell my aging mother, who's already lost a son to this, that she was about to lose her last son and that was — that was a tough conversation."

Carla added: "2023 was just a summer of crying. It was horribly depressing."

But then something almost unbelievable happened, when Fredrik went to see another doctor, a neurologist.

He went for a whole panel of tests, and the neurologist told him he had likely been misdiagnosed.

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"My jaw dropped. Did he just say that I'm not dying?" Bergstrom said. "I was in shock. I had made a playlist for my funeral. I'd asked people to speak at my funeral. Now I'm no longer dying?"

While Fredrik has said he does not want to pursue any legal action against his doctors, he is calling for doctors to have the utmost awareness of how careful they need to be with what they say.

He said: "I think that doctors really need to understand the dire consequences of such a hard and severe diagnosis.

"If you have a suspicion of such a severe and difficult diagnosis, that should be elevated to an expert. The fact that, both verbally and in writing, I have an ALS diagnosis — that should not have happened."

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