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Teen Diagnoses Her Own Disease In Science Class
18-year-old Jessica Terry suffered from stomach pain, diarrhea, vomiting and fever for eight years. She often missed school and her doctors were unable to figure out the cause of her sickness. Then one day in January someone was finally figured out what was wrong with Jessica. That person was her. While looking under a microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue in her AP science class, Jessica noticed an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, which is an indication of Crohn's disease. "It's weird I had to solve my own medical problem," Terry told CNN affiliate KOMO in Seattle, Washington. "There were just no answers anywhere. ... I was always sick."
Interesting: while reading about her symptoms, Crohn's Disease was the first think that came to my mind. And no, I'm not a doctor. So what kind of doctors were seeing her? Veterinary ones?
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
I thought this was a joke when I first read it. Crohn's disease is actually quite a common ailment so I cant believe no doctor diagnosed this. Where did she get a sample of her own intestinal tissue? I mean seriously...
I've been struggling with lactose intolerance for a similar period of time and also had similar, unsatisfactory, experiences with doctors.
The one to diagnose it, finally, was me with a little help from Dr. Google.
My wife has made similar experiences with gynaecologists. Some were actually telling her that the pill had no side-effects. Unbelievable, really.
Also, some doctors she consulted and whom prescribed drugs would say that said drugs did not interfere with the pill, when, clearly stated in the package insert, they did.
Meh, I had to diagnose myself as well (Addison's disease) after 5 year of suffering... Constant low blood pressure, hyperkalemia and hypoglycemia, and no doctor ever even thought like "hey, maybe we should do some more tests". I had to friggin ask to test my cortisone levels, they didn't even bother.
"Yeah well, normal blood tests don't show nothing special, except those potassium and sugar values, but that's nothing to worry about." Not even when those values (elevated/reducted/...) were the same 5 years in a row.
Really, I've kinda lost my faith in the diagnostic abilities of a lot of doctors
Yes, I've acknowledged that - as I said the pathologist will have been presented with many many samples, turned into slides, looking for a few, if any, granulomata, which are tiny in size. I even said "Now do you start to see why a pathologist may miss it?" It is very hard, if not impossible, to scan every single slide in its entirity, for a granuloma. Fortunately this girl found it, when the pathologist didn't. Props to her,
There is a flaw in your reasoning... Having lots of money does not mean you have the -skill- to make money, nor does it mean you are smart or even particularly skilled. See "trust fund babies".
It can be difficult to diagnose. I had an ex who had it, and had been diagnosed for years. She went to a new doctor who ran some tests and they said they couldn't find any trace of Crohns, and tried to re-diagnose her with IBS. Apparently the signs are not persistent, so depending on when the doctors did the test, its possible they could have missed the inflamed tissue and ruled it out early on. Or, they could just be morons.
Yes. In fact, I know 3 people with Crohn's disease, and it is, in fact, difficult to diagnose. I realize 3 people doesn't make a study, but all 3 were undiagnosed for years, despite each having seen a veritable army of doctors. The problem is that symptom-wise Crohn's disease often looks like a lot of other stuff, like ulcerative colitis, dysteria (and other viruses), lactose intolerance, food allergies, various infections, etc. With the flare-ups as described, it goes like this:
Patient: I've had diarrhea and cramps for 2 weeks now.
Doctor: Huh. Probably an infection. Here, let's give you some antibiotics.
A couple of weeks later, everything is cleared up, doctor assumes that the antibiotic worked. The patient then gets another flare up, doctor think it's something else, lather, rinse and repeat.
(Disclaimer: my mother, my wife, and sister-in-law all have medical backgrounds, but I don't short of reading scientific articles generally geared at lay people, along with some professional journal articles. YMMV)
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Wonder how they missed it (granulomas are relatively "easy" to spot). During lectures from pathology they would always show slides and point out a million different things only visible to them!
;)
That said Crohn's disease is really nasty because it is a transmural (contrary to ulcerative collitis in which "only" the upper layer is inflamed) and can occur throughout the whole digestive tract (from mouth to anus...) Quite a lot of patients need repetitive surgery to remove inflamed intestine.
As other pointed out as well most of the symptoms are common which makes it a difficult to diagnose (cause you can't put every patient trough a endoscopy, for financial, patient well being and capacity reasons).
There are off course typical cases but most patients do not have the decency to stick to the symptoms they should have according to the text book
Frankly, I think self, or at least at home diagnosis, IS the future of health care. Med tech needs to be sold at the consumer level and incorporated into the daily hygienic routine, in a non intrusive way. The bathroom of the future will have diagnosed this problem. After you take your morning piss, or crap in in your space toilet, it will analyze the contents and report back any, uh, interesting findings, proposed causes, solutions, possibly give the option of scheduling an appointment with a doctor, etc.
Hell, doctors are ALREADY being giving PDAs with diagnosis software based on data mining techniques. Type in the list of symptoms, and let the program compare with a repository of data to kick out a diagnosis. I think we're heading to a point, probably still in the far future, where "doctors" in the traditional meaning are irrelevant. They will probably be needed to perform actual procedures, or to diagnose more complex sets of health issues, but for simple "analysis" of basic or common, health problems, machines in every home will be plenty sufficient, as well as add the benefits of early warning.
However there will probably be obstacles in the way of moving med tech to a consumer product for self diagnosis in home. Namely various doctors/medical associations that are looking out for their own interests, and busybody government buerocrats seeking to "protect" you from the possibility of self-misdiagnosis while actually protecting the profits of a somewhat marginalized profession.Similar to what we see happening in every industry where tech marginalizes former moneymakers...
Anyway, good for this girl!
Now make me a space toilet!
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
Pure FUD.
I live in a country with socialised medicine and it's funny, because we also have private medicine and insurances, but people with really bad diseases get sent to the public system because the privates refuse to spend money treating them. And they lack the equipment, anyway. It's expensive.
There was an expert system developed some time ago called Mycin. What made Mycin interesting is its high performance rate relative to other subject matter experts. In fact, to the extent to which this area's been pursued lately in academic circles (which is to say, not much; the current hot topics in AI are computer vision, emotion detection, embodied cognition, and robotics), the results have been similar. The expert systems produce results on par with, or superior to, experts in the field.
That said, there's strong pushback in this area from doctors, just as teachers and school administrators are typically opposed to intelligent tutoring systems despite their excellent outcomes. Integration with other systems and the user interface have been issues as well; academic software tends to be of the "stovepipe" variety. There's also a legitimate concern about overreliance on the technology.
It is worth noting, though, that the limited quality (in terms of sensitivity and specificity) of medical information means that the expert system actually needs to be relatively complex. You don't want the expert system to return thousands of equal probability diagnoses, or alternatively to leap to the wrong conclusion based on sparse data.
The Freelance Wizard
The answer was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schistosomiasis, which I contracted as a young child. It ruined my life, for sure. The trouble is, if you ask any doctor here in the US they will tell you it does not even exist here, only in west Africa and South America. I've never even been anywhere near there, or outside the country at the time at which I contracted it. If you have ever been labelled with IBS but have other symptoms as well then you might want to read the above wikipedia article.
Because the doctors are not aware of the disease, they do not diagnose it.
Because doctors do not diagnose it, they do not collect any statistics.
Because the disease is statistically insignificant, the medical schools do not teach much, if any, about it.
Therefore the doctors don't know about it.
Anyone see a problem with this situation?
What really hurts is that when it really started affecting my health my primary care physician at the time was an EXPERT in those diseases, and she just blew me off because it would bee too hard to think, or to send me for actual tests of some kind. You would never know her ineptitude by looking at her wall of certification she earned in medical school in west Africa. Of all doctors, including at least three infectious disease specialists, this one completely boggles my mind how she could have missed this diagnosis!
After 37+ years of damage it took my buying my own 1600x stereo microscope mounted with a CCD camera to collect some indisputable evidence, one day to use it, one doctor visit to present my case, three days just to find a source in the US to fill the prescription, and only 24 hours to actually cure it. The damage was done, and nothing can ever give me back my health, or a normal life for that matter. The real kicker is my dog gets that exact same 'cure' every month, but it took me three days to find a supplier for a 'human' prescription for the exact same drug. All I can say is at least my dog has someone that actually cares about his health!
Try searching for medical insurance won't pay treatment on google and let me know if any of the 21 million results make it clear to you why people would look to have a choice other than a for profit insurance company or paying out of pocket.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I thank god every time I go to my doctor. He's awesome. I met him because I needed a second opinion. I was developing carpal tunnel syndrome and my old doc wanted to operate, so I did the smart thing and got a second opinion. My current doctor was like "Take that brace off. Take one aspirin every morning and it will clear up within a week or two. Here's a strong analgesic to get it started. See your tendons are inflamed. The swelling causes the tendons to be sore because they are pushing out against the "guides" (he used normal person speak for me). This is a vicious cycle because this rubbing causes further inflammation. The aspirin will take the swelling down and allow the irritation to heal. You are definitely on your way to CTS, but you don't need an operation yet and it's preventable."
Within a week it was gone. He's been my doctor ever since.
He recommended that I start working out and biking to fix my chronic acid reflux problem, which also worked. My old doctor just put me on medication. I'm pain and completely medication free because of this guy. Not bad for someone my age.
Great doctors are out there. Hope you find one, listen, and do what they tell you...
-Viz
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.