'ChatGPT saved my mom': How AI helped techie diagnose her mom after doctors failed

In a gripping account that has gone viral on social media, an X user who goes by @Life_of_coder has credited OpenAI’s ChatGPT with helping save her mother’s life after more than a year of unexplained illness.

“ChatGPT saved my mom,” she wrote. “My mom had a nonstop cough for 1.5 years. We saw top doctors, visited big hospitals in & out of the city, tried homeopathy, ayurveda, allopathy nothing helped. It got worse: internal bleeding started.”

Despite multiple consultations and a battery of treatments, doctors remained unable to pinpoint the root cause. The turning point came not in a hospital, but at home, when she turned to ChatGPT for help.

“Out of desperation, I described everything to ChatGPT. ChatGPT gave me many reasons out of it one was BP medication, which we could never thought about. (sic)”

After confirming that her mother was indeed on blood pressure medication, she input that information. ChatGPT responded by asking whether the drug contained a specific ingredient, one that it suggested could be the culprit behind the persistent cough and internal complications.

She took the AI’s advice to her doctor, who validated the concern and immediately switched her mother’s medication. The result? Her mother is finally healing after nearly two years of suffering.

“Not exaggerating but ChatGPT saved her life,” she added, thanking OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in the post.

The Rise of AI in Personal Health Guidance

While AI tools like ChatGPT are not licensed medical professionals, their ability to cross-reference symptoms with vast datasets in real time is proving increasingly helpful, especially in cases where traditional methods fall short or when patients feel unheard.

This isn’t an isolated case. In April 2025, a 27-year-old woman in France named Marly Garnreiter told People magazine that ChatGPT correctly flagged Hodgkin lymphoma nearly a year before doctors eventually diagnosed her.

In another case reported by the New York Post, a mother of two in the US used ChatGPT to investigate her symptoms after receiving conflicting medical advice. The AI model suggested Hashimoto’s disease, leading to further tests that confirmed thyroid cancer.

Even more remarkably, a Reddit user went viral earlier this year after sharing how ChatGPT identified a rare genetic mutation: MTHFR A1298C, that had gone undetected by doctors for over a decade. After the AI flagged it, testing confirmed the diagnosis, leading to proper treatment and recovery. 

Proceed With Caution

Despite these hopeful stories, medical professionals stress that AI tools should not be considered a replacement for clinical evaluation. While models like ChatGPT are useful in synthesising information and prompting questions, they can also produce hallucinated or outdated responses.

Still, this new wave of tech-assisted self-advocacy is reshaping how patients engage with healthcare, empowering them with knowledge, curiosity, and a second opinion that just might change the course of treatment.