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Non CFS news item on a virus misdiagnoses

floydguy

Senior Member
Messages
650
i dont know if i should of put the following in another area or what, but want to share this horrible news item...which i guess is just an example of how doctors miss virus's. poor woman. It made me think of how poorly those with CFS are often treated too when it comes to pain.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/7925470/doctors-mistake-fatal-brain-virus-for-migraine

I think this a great example of problems in the way doctors diagnose. I've heard doctors recite the phrase when in New York and you hear hoof beats, think horse, not zebra. Sort of the 80/20 rule. The problem is that with "Doctor Think" that 20% of patients are not diagnosed properly and there are few mechanisms for them to be diagnosed until a catastrophic event takes place...more often than they want to admit those hoof beats in Central Park are zebras not horses.
 

serenity

Senior Member
Messages
571
Location
Austin
awful, i am not surprised. recently my aunt had a brain tumor removed after being told her headaches were due to stress. it wasn't until she began talking gibberish & fainted that she was given an MRI that detected the tumor that had to be removed immediately.
 

Otis

Señor Mumbler
Messages
1,117
Location
USA
awful, i am not surprised. recently my aunt had a brain tumor removed after being told her headaches were due to stress. it wasn't until she began talking gibberish & fainted that she was given an MRI that detected the tumor that had to be removed immediately.

serenity,

I hope things work out for your aunt. I had a close friend and co-worker who died of brain tumor 20 years ago. By the time they found it the operation bought him time but not much quality of life. He left behind a wife and infant son who never got to know how warm, loving and funny his dad was.

When he was going through the "diagnostic" process he was recounting his response to his Dr.'s question if he had any stress. He said "Like being fired, starting my own company, having my wife on bed-rest for her pregnancy, having a new-born... (I'm forgetting a couple)", and the Dr. replied "Yes, like any of those" to which he replied "No, I meant all of those." I'm pretty sure that computer monitors used for computer main-frame systems from the 70-80s emitted huge doses of radiation - other people we worked with also got brain tumors.

We can have stress or other mitigating factors and still have the worst-case scenario. "Do no harm" should be "Make damn sure you do no harm by doing nothing, or doing it too slowly". Not in today's health-care environment, I'm afraid.