Teen diagnosed herself with Crohns

[Joe]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/11/teen.self.diagnosis/index.html

Her doctors, no matter how hard they tried, couldn't figure out the cause of Jessica's abdominal distress.

Then one day in January, Terry, 18, figured it out on her own.

In her Advanced Placement high school science class, she was looking under the microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue -- slides her pathologist had said were completely normal -- and spotted an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, a clear indication that she had Crohn's disease.

I'm having a hard time wrapping around that doctors couldn't diagnose it in the first place, sorta spooky in a sense that in this day and age still we hear of misdiagnosis and mistakes. how far have we come ?

 

[Jeff D.]

My question is how she got slides of her intestines. My docs would have never given them to me.

 

[kello82]

hah jeff i was gonna ask the same thing! i was scrolling down all ready to post that.
i was thinking she got them herself somehow....but uh, how
all you have to do is swab the tissue to get cells. we looked at our cheek cells in bio.
dont tell me all the kids had to go home and swab their rectums.....

 

[CD68]

My question is how she got slides of her intestines. My docs would have never given them to me.

The pathologist gets them rather than the GI. If a doc needs them they'll pack them in ice, say for a second opinion, and then personally ship them to the doc. The doc then has to give them back. Seems to me that the pathologist wouldn't give them to the patient for that reason.

It sounds like in the case of this girl there was a single pathologist who looked at the slides from some biopsy and missed something. This doesn't mean that docs can't diagnose Crohn's, this means that she needed a second opinion on the biopsy samples.

 

[drew_wymore]

I saw this last week .. very cool .. at least she got her diagnosis. From the way the article reads, the pathologist gave her the slides to look at and then the teacher took a pic from the scope and sent it to another pathologist who confirmed the students findings.

My step dad said they interviewed the girl live and the pathologist and he said he felt pretty dumb that he missed it.

I did try doing this myself but I lack a microscope and the q-tip wouldn't go far enough in =(

 

[D Bergy]

Smart kid. If she is like me, she will always be skeptical of doctors from now on.

Dan

 

[kello82]

HAH kim, "glue two qtips together"
lmao

drew:

THAT should getcha where you need to be......

 

[My Butt Hurts]

And.. um.. if you need help..

/whispers "call me"...

 

[merrywidow]

thats kinda ssad in this day and age that something so life changing could be missed.
though my sisteer was 31 weeks prgnant before she found out she was pregnant.

q-tips over here are called cottonbuds.

sharon xx

 

[CD68]

HAH kim, "glue two qtips together"
lmao



THAT should getcha where you need to be......

:ylol2: :ylol2: :ylol2:

 

[Colt]

Mistakes like that are made all the time. Quite often the person doing the test doesn't really pay attention because they don't really care. They just need to get their work done. How that work affects you means nothing to them.

Just yesterday one of my co-workers sent up a tube of blood for a norepinephrine level. For that test the patient needs to lay down for 30 minutes prior because any kind of action or stress will raise your levels. The patient had not done the resting period. When I caught the mistake it had already been sent to chemistry and she just shrugged and said to forget about it.

The same person botched my metanephrine level by having it sit around for too long. Too late to have it done now since the atenelol would change the results.

It's so easy to change your results it's not funny. Under-filling a blood tube to save time will change the additive ratio and change the results, dropping a tube or pulling too aggresively on a syrine can break apart blood cells releasing chemicals and lowing the blood count, contaminating one tube with the additive of another, letting the blood sit around too long, not cleaning the skin with the right wipe, exposing the blood to atmosphere, exposure to light, leaving the tournaqit on too long, etc, etc.

Something happens to pretty much every test. It's just a matter of how much it changes the results. As long as humans are involved in the testing there will inevitably be simple human error.

 

[xX_LittleMissValentine_Xx]

q-tips over here are called cottonbuds.

hahaha!!:ylol2: :ylol2: :ylol2:
I was wondering what a q-tip was!!

xXxXx

 

[la la]

I love when they are checking my inr and one nurse is showing the other how to do it and she squeezes my finger to get enough blood then says....your not supose to squeeze for more blood but I do anyway because it is hard to get enough out sometimes This is scary since they are testing if my blood is to thin or too thick. Bleed out or blood clot?? hmmm...this kind of seems like a big deal to me.. you think?

 

[Lisa5326]

I can't tell you how many people have told me about this story! They think I should do it myself so I can get diagnosed definitively. Maybe I'll try out your cottonbud (haha :ylol2: how cute!) method.