The other day I was reading a news story

[conuly]

Some kid had a weird illness but LUCKILY! some other kid had died of the same strange symptoms last year and the mom had read an article on the subject and so her kid survived. Happy ending all around, except for the dead kid.

Man, I cannot get enough of these stories. Girls who get into car accidents and this is how they find out about the brain tumor that would've killed them, happy grandmas who show a picture of their kids to the receptionist at the dentist's office and find out that some odd feature of the eyes indicates a serious, yet treatable medical condition, people who happen to mention an odd detail of their lives in passing to strangers in the park who turn out to be doctors who are experts in the one disease that strange detail reveals - I love them. I don't even care if they're true. (Well, I care a little.)

There's something about the coincidences. People love those. Some people love them so much they chalk this up to divine providence, but that's ridiculous, and not just because I don't believe in god(s) or, indeed, any other supernatural entities (though I do like to pretend that I believe in ghosts now and again). Obviously a second's thought will tell you that for every "truth is stranger than fiction!" story we hear, there must be tons more that we don't hear because there are no weird coincidences in those stories at all. People find out about their illnesses in the usual way, or they don't.

Funnily enough, though, stories about where freakishly weird chains of events conspire to cause people to miss their doomed flight or reunite with their lost love do nothing for me. It's gotta be medical miracles.

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Comments

[jessie_c]

Of course nobody mentions the strange coincidences where someone hurried to catch the bus which then crashed into a semi-trailer, or the coincidence where someone else got to the store 30 seconds after the finished taking down all the sale signs...

[conuly]

Definitely not.

[gingicat]

That’s actually how a friend of mine was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos disease, though less random since she’s a biology researcher at Harvard. :) Her department head put two and two together and introduced her to the resident expert.

At the time, EDS was considered to be extremely rare, but I’m guessing that this is no longer the case.

[thewayne]

Two years ago, that exact sort of thing happened to my dad.

In May, he had a seizure in the middle of the night. Had never had a seizure before, he was in his early 80s at the time. Rushed to the hospital, all sorts of diagnostics, no apparent cause for the seizure. But they discovered he had a tumor in his chest, non-small cell lung cancer. He'd had it for a few years. It was treated successfully, and he's doing pretty well for someone in his mid 80s.

As it happens, at about the same time I was informed that my contract was not going to be renewed in June. Since my dad had a seizure, he lost his driving privileges for 90 days, so I went to Phoenix to play chauffeur and medical ears. I drove them to a neurology appointment, and after an exam we're talking to the doctor and she's kind of baffled because everything seems pretty normal. I ask "Did he ever tell you about an industrial accident that he had in the early '70s when he fell through a roof?" No, he hadn't. He was working in a false ceiling, grabbed some wires to pull himself out, they weren't properly grounded and they blew him through said ceiling. He took out a door closer with his face on the way down, fracturing his left eye orbit. Te doctor said "NO!" Turns out that fracture probably caused a tiny amount of brain damage, something that his younger body over the last 40+ years could compensate for, but now it needs a pharmaceutical boost to control.

My dad didn't think that an accident on the job that almost killed him was worth mentioning.


Nine years ago it happened to me. In 2008/9 I had pneumonia five times in seven months. My wife correctly diagnosed it after the second instance: a genetic disorder called Hypogammaglobulinemia, or your body just decided you don't need to produce antibodies anymore. We fired two sets of doctors over that one including a lung specialist, and both the lung specialist and the immunologist who eventually was brow-beat by my wife in to running the correct immuneglobin test blamed it on bronchitis, which doesn't normally produce 103 degree temperatures. Your body has four different types of immuneglobin (antibodies). My Type G was 150, should be 700-1400. The others were zero. Then, after a retest, he admitted my wife was correct.

Her father was a deputy county coroner, in addition to her PhD in astronomy she knows a lot about medicine.

[conuly]

Glad you're alive! And also that your dad got treated correctly.

[thewayne]

For most people with my condition it can take six YEARS to get a correct diagnosis, we were fortunate that my wife is a tiger when it comes to my health.  I suffered no permanent scarring in my lungs, though my lung function is that of an 80 y/o.  Part of the problem is that doctors are trained to watch for immunological symptoms more if they're pediatricians, not doctors for adults, as that's when it's more likely to emerge.  But 10% of newly diagnosed cases are people in their 40s, that's not exactly chump change.

[mme-n-b.livejournal.com]

Here's a story just for you, and it's true: my friend had a one-night stand with a stranger she met on a beach in Crimea (this was back when nice people vacationed in Crimea). Or, at least, she had a five-minute stand. That's approximately how long it took him before the first gentle caress of her breast and "let's get dressed, my friend is the shift doctor today". His friend arranged an immediate operation, and she survived, but while she was recovering his wife found out about this story so they never ended up hooking up after all.

[conuly]

That is the BEST omg thanks.

[mme-n-b.livejournal.com]

For some reason his wife disagreed. That woman just doesn't get happy endings. ;)

[siderea]

Goddamn! That is the best.

[siderea]

I don't know about you, but the thing I love about those stories is that they involve someone having rare specialty knowledge saving the day. This is thoroughly validating of my knowledge-hoarderish tendencies. I need to know this because someday I might need it to save somebody's life!

[conuly]

That would be a great moment, true. *daydream*

[greghousesgf]

I wish I could be in New York to see the rest of those photographs, I lived back east in the summer of '78.
I'm a woman who has been rejected CONSTANTLY, but I don't want to kill anybody!

[conuly]

I'm a woman who has been rejected CONSTANTLY, but I don't want to kill anybody!

Yeah, but that's because you're not an over-entitled fuckwad with a raging case of toxic masculinity.

[spikethemuffin]

And I'm never rejected, but I want to kill EVERYBODY between about November 16th and January 4th. But I work in customer service, and that's baseline.

[conuly]

That's fair.

[spikethemuffin]

I have hypothyroidism, and because I was depressive, it did not occur to my doctors to test. Symptoms got really, really acute over at least three years: I gained 80 pounds, could not walk without a cane, joints swollen like I was the world's most dedicated fruit smuggler, could not wear slacks because pants made my legs bleed, and behavior so erratic I lost my job of ten years and the person I consider the love of my life. Finally, my father insisted on taking me to his doctor, who diagnosed me with a 45 dollar test and put me on the (as far as I'm concerned) miracle drug levothyroxine. (My doctor, a friend of my mother's who had been told that my baseline was fat [at size three mind you, American body standards bozhe moi], spacy, and lazy squeaked when she heard my TSH number).

I told a friend this, and she decided to bring it up to her doctor when she was talking about her mysterious aches.

Luckily, the tumor was smaller than a quarter and had not metastasized. She's fine now. But I think my dad saved two lives with that test.

[archangelbeth]

My mom got diagnosed with hypothyroidism by accident: she was doing all these "be a guinea pig for money!" things, and they tested thyroid to make sure it wasn't a confounding factor before starting the study, and then they were crawling through the phone telling her to GET TO A DOCTOR ABOUT HER THYROID.

She recalls she thinks it was 3 figures. The doctor, she said, was asking how she was walking. ("Uh, one foot in front of the other?") Me, I was always exhausted (but I'd just had a kid, and was lazy besides), had irregular periods (that's normal, right?), was intolerant to cold (but I was living in New England after growing up in central Texas), and had gained weight above pregnancy-weight even after I'd been breastfeeding (I guess "the preggers weight melts right off" is a fib, eh?).

She finally harassed me into getting tested. TSH 10.8, I think it was. ...I basically cannot cope well if my TSH goes above 2.5 or so, I've found.

My mom's pretty sure her dad's dementia and death were hypothyroid related. But hey, he was a guy, and hypothyroidism is a womanly problem, right? (WRONG.)


Yay for you getting diagnosed, and your friend getting the tumor caught!!!

[spikethemuffin]

Gah! Yeah, I pretty much averaged you and your mum. Good on YOU for diagnosis.

It feels like hypothyroidism is getting pretty pandemic, lately... I wonder if that's just "we're catching it more," or it's actually happening more often? I literally know more women who have it than don't, right now.

[archangelbeth]

That is some scary TSH there. *hi5s that you got diagnosed*

I personally suspect 'catching it more,' with a possible side-order of 'it's often genetic, so we're potentially not weeding ourselves out of the gene-pool as early.' Although it can creep up slowly as well, so there's plenty of time to transmit. -_-

Plus the guidelines have changed. I've found old online stuff that suggested TSH 8 was fine! Please insert Horrified Scream Emoji here. Heck, TSH 5 is often still used by labs as the upper end. Me, I will start pitching a fit if it goes above 2.5, and I AM ALWAYS RIGHT THUS FAR.

[dandelion.livejournal.com]

You might like this radio documentary, about a man who discovered his brain tumour after a minor accident (crashed his bicycle?):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p063cp2d

(I don't think you have to be in the UK, but if that page won't work it's the "Seriously..." BBC podcast, the episode The Vet With Two Brains.)

[conuly]

I do appreciate it, tons, thanks!