#medical mystery

[doomspaniels]

I am getting really worried about the Princess, folks. That maybe-shoulder, maybe neck, maybe... low back? pain thing (that started while I was in hospital in Oct) keeps getting worse. She saw the university neuros last week and is getting an MRI this week. They didn't find any specific neuro symptoms, nor joint symptoms when PT did their eval, but prednisone dramatically improved her symptoms, so they're looking for things like fluid pockets or swellings that shouldn't be there. Scary examples, like immune-mediated polyarthritis and syrinx.

I don't have a smile today. I'm sorry.

[mama-mozzarella]

Why even have hospitals when we can just take some ibuprofen and a nap??

[longreads]

I love a good medical drama. My mother, a nurse, raised me on ER and General Hospital, always pointing out all the plot lines that “would never happen in real life” but were really cool to watch on TV. My mother credits ER with pushing her toward her decades-long career in the operating room. So when I, a poor lost college sophomore who had gone to school to play French horn (French horn!) and found it wasn’t what I thought it would be, I did what I knew best to do and turned to TV. And on TV, I found House.

House had it all: a painkiller-addicted doctor with a smart mouth and a slap-worthy face, medical mysteries solved via CSI-style case-of-the-week format, and a beleaguered crew of sidekick physicians whose instincts were never quite as good as House’s. I would spend each episode studying the setup and trying to unravel what the medical culprit could be before the ultimate reveal. Instead of realizing that what I might want to be was a writer with a good plot, I missed the mark and decided I wanted to be a doctor.

Want to feel like you’re watching House, M.D. this Tuesday morning? Dig into Lisa Bubert’s new reading list on medical mysteries!

[auntie-doom]

Folks, my POTS is broken.

This is easily one of the most bizarre things in my life with this lemon of a body. I've been experiencing this predictable heart rate jump when I stand up, without fail, for over three decades... until the heart rate increase started failing mid-leap.

I thought I just wasn't recovering from a cold in March, went to the doc in late April; my lungs were clear, no high WBC, wasn't a secondary infection. But the symptoms were apparently consistent with heart or lung damage. Doc sent me to the ER. The ER chest CT was clear, but while I was hooked to the ER machines I noticed my oxygen saturation kept doing this slow dropping down to alarmingly low levels--and I felt fine--then slow climbing back to 99%. A few minutes later I was hit by intense fatigue & pain.

I checked it on the fingertip pulse/ox after I got home, still happening, but fingertip machine had difficulty with motion and rapidly changing numbers. I got a wearable bluetooth pulse/ox. I'm still seeing the oxygen saturation dips and it's pretty terrifying, yes, WTF is this meat machine doing now? (My doc thinks leakage between oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, which is not reassuring at all. I have a cardiac referral.)

But seeing my POTS get tripped partway through a jump is *freaky*.

Look at that (about 11am). That's not right. My heart rate started to do the typical POTS jump and crashed to below 50 instead, coinciding with a dramatic O2 drop. What the hell. (full screenshot under readmore)

How long has it been doing this? Is my physical hardware just unable to react to the dysautonomia "speed up" signals? Is this why the fatigue has been increasing way past reasonable?

I had a heart ultrasound and multiple EKGs during the POTS diagnosis, but apparently what I need is a heart ultrasound with "bubble test," which I have never had. I even wore a pulse/ox for a sleep study but this doesn't happen at night! Mostly. It does coincide with activity... frequently... sometimes I am not doing anything... but almost always I am awake.

My POTS is broken and I am so weirded out.

[praublem-child]

Me: hasn’t slept, is extremely dehydrated, hasn’t eaten, has five assignments to do tonight, just got bad health news, has to babysit in three hours then celebrate my brothers birthday, has been off meds for three weeks bc of a test

Also me: damn, why do I feel so bad today?

(Also, for the record, I am going to eat and drink water rn, I genuinely forgot about it. My life is hell)

[aristocratic-otter]

And here's chapter 3!

Chapter 3: Who We Are, Truth and Fiction

Summary:

Baz goes through Simon's medical records but finds nothing to help him understand what's going on with Simon now. It's time to uncover the lie.

Baz

I spend the next several days studying Simon’s case history. I barely sleep and I don’t really eat. I subsist on coffee and nervous energy. There’s a mystery here, and I need to get to the bottom of it before Snow takes another runner.

I notice a troubling pattern, but it’s hard to pin down: frequent injury, seldom dangerous, throughout the ten years since he and I left school. I can’t decipher a connection between these incidents, so I actually go to the considerable trouble of ordering his childhood medical files from the care system.

What I read makes me feel sick.

Read on AO3

[undeadcourier]

lmfao you lose karma for blackmailing private stone into giving you some of the stolen medical supplies only if you narc after. if you lie to richards, there's no drop

[starr-angelofnarnia]

Carlisle Cullen as an emergency room physician is cool. But I'd like to see Dr. Cullen working as a concierge doctor, taking in patients with medical mysteries. Talk about helping people.

[fanficfanattic]

Gonna see my rheumatologist about the mystery of my misfiring right leg. Wish me luck on finding answers!

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

TGIF

I think I crashed out around 9:00 and woke up just after midnight with my skin feeling like it was on fire, itching all over my body. I'm guessing that is the unreleased nerves and anxiety manifesting itself from the field trip and earlier in the day.

When I go see my doctor on the 31st-- and we have another school activity on the 31st that we have to attend. I guess they don't do trick or treating here anymore. I was kind of looking forward to handing out some candy but apparently not--- I'll leave school early for my doctor's appointment and then come back at 6:00 for the event.

Anyway I'm hoping to get some answers as to why this is happening( waking up for no reason with my skin itching off my body then no amount of scratching will help.).

A fellow teacher seems to think it is overactive nerves. I'm just worried about being put on more medication as I am on quite a bit of it for things that have been wrong for years -- meds that I have to take meds for to keep me alive and able to see.

I have lots of other smaller problems that I have been offered medication for in the past and refuse just because I don't want to keep taking more stuff for one and number two it's hard enough for me to remember to take medicine I already have that I absolutely have to take.

I was very surprised that the kids behaved themselves on the field trip and they did so well on the mural project even if a few of them really didn't get it because I had some very wonderful murals that had nothing to do with indians.

Grades are due today for report cards so I don't have to go back over the weekend or take anything home. I did all of my laundry and got groceries last week although it seems like I'm getting groceries every week because inflation is so high I get to the store and end up just never ever getting enough to last us through the week. But I guess I will just kick back and enjoy more horror movies this weekend.

On another note we don't ever have enough teachers where I am at and so when one is getting ready to take off on maternity leave they had to take the other social studies t-shirt to fill in for her and then put a substitute into social studies.

It turned out the man that got the substitute teaching job is our former vice principal and a retired military man who has lived everywhere and done everything and even worked with the Secret Service to help protect some presidents of the past. He is a wonderful man. He is very soft spoken yet firm and he and I get along great. And the fifth graders treat him like absolute s***. You would think maybe if they thought the other teacher was a pushover because she came from a private school they're having a military guy in would be a good solution. But no they don't care about him either and he has completely lost control of the last two period classes. So they are sending a second teacher in who would normally have a conference. At the end of the day to back him up to try to get the students under control.

This makes me so bad because he is such a genuinely good and decent man and if he worked his way up to principalship-- which he was principal of the middle school for a while and assistant principal for us, and if they refuse to listen to him they're just going to listen to anybody. That makes me feel slightly better about my experiences last year but still feel crappy for him.

[doomspaniels]

How’s Guinevere doing?

Well, your timing is fortuitous. The hard-to-pinpoint pain (that seemed to start while I was in the hospital in October) keeps getting worse. We keep upping her pain meds, but the pain is still affecting her.

She had a spine MRI yesterday[*] . They didn't find anything to explain the pain, which seems to be across her shoulders & ribs, and across her hindquarters & thighs. They did find some "hydromyelia without evidence of cerebellar herniation" but it doesn't explain this pain.

They did a spinal tap, which also didn't find anything to help.

They referred us over to PT & Rehab, who can look for more rheumatological-type muscle & joint issues. Apparently there's no Rheum department. We'll keep upping her pain meds while we keep trying.

[*] Yes, the day after Tristan was diagnosed with back trouble

[dreamtigress]

Help for DragonMakr & Emma

I won't often post things like this, but a dear friend's kitty, Emma, is going through painful mystery medical issues. Any little bit would help. Please take a look and share if possible. I'd appreciate it. https://gofund.me/84ce12bc

[pernlover]

Cooking dinner. In so much pain I can barely breathe. Using my fancy olive wood spatula. Maybe not fancy to some. But what is prohibitively expensive for me. A special find.

I go to spread out potatoes. Not even roughly. It snaps. And in that moment the tears almost fall. Then my son says oh no are you ok! He can tell I'm not ok. But thinks I've hurt myself. No I'm fine. Switch to a spoon and pretend to be fine. But I'll cry. I'm crying now. Hard. It's just a physical representation of the pain I'm in. The unknown of what's wrong.

But also the item I can't even hope to replace.

I'll cry. But it won't help. I'll cry again and again. Because I don't know how to not be me.

I don't know how to not worry.

I don't know how to not feel jealous of the life experiences that have happened around me as I sat being the good girl.

I don't know how to accept the pain in my body and the pain in my soul.

[science-for-the-masses]

Bacterial conjunctivitis, or was he just really an actual vampire?

[psychoticjournal]

ayo shout out to my fellow medical mysteries <3 it sucks not having answers but you don't need a diagnosis to be valid. you are still disabled if you don't know why