[lit-ideas] Re: Kyphoplasty For Julie's Mom
- From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 16:56:58 -0500
Re. the diagnosis I'm encouraging her to see a new
internist for a definite diagnosis.
_____
Not to scare you, but simply to relate a tragic event that happened to a
friend. He complained of increasing levels of back pain and was shunted
around the medical system with inadequate diagnoses. One doctor even
suggested that he was faking complaints to get pain medicine. Another
thought it was a slipped disc in the neck and he received a clear MRI of
the neck.
Pain kept increasing and after screaming on a chiropractor's table, he
finally went to the emergency room. Turned out to be lymphoma of the
spine. They had to operate immediately, remove vertebrae, put in
titanium replacement rods. Nobody was looking for lymphoma because it
was so rare.
Yet when I visited him in the Pennsylvania hospital, the head nurse
privately confirmed the existence of a cluster of such cases in the
hospital. (To me that suggests some local toxicity, like benzene in the
water supply.)
Now this man, with whom I had hiked hundreds of miles on the Appalachian
Trail, a man who could identify almost every plant or animal in the
forest, can now barely hobble six suburban blocks a day and is in
constant pain from the effects of spinal compression caused by the
lymphoma. All this because diagnoses are more statistical than thorough.
The multiply negative lesson: Doctors can't see what they're not looking
for, and don't always look for what shouldn't be there, especially when
insurance won't pay for looking for things that should not be there.
Eric
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