After some discussions of symptoms, Meredith sent out an e-mail stating "we should have them check to see if he has a bladder infection, which can cause these symptoms."
Sure enough. Meredith seems to have been on to something (given the diagnosis they provided to me over the phone about an hour later). Good job, Meredith.
For at least one night, I am willing to acknowledge your unblemished record in diagnostic medicine (with House no longer on tv, there's room for someone else in the field) with the honorary title of Dr. Tromble for Meredith.
5 comments:
I bask in the glory of my new title. With luck, I will never need to make another diagnosis and thus can maintain a 100% record.
What was the hospital doing? Isn't a urinary tract infection pretty basic?
Perhaps hard to diagnose without urine? I think g'pa was also dehydrated, making sample collection more difficult/delayed.
I was alert to the possibility because of the experiences my friend Jessica had with her mother -- for some lucky reason, the topic had come up in drawing group recently so it was fresh in my mind. Apparently, in older people "simple" infections can have symptoms that are quite different from the symptoms in younger people. Unless the health professionals involved have been trained in geriatric medicine, they may not look for infection but attribute confusion, etc. to dementia. Unfortunately, that is always an easy, available answer, particularly when the patient can't communicated very clearly about what they are experiencing. The hospital in Norman sounds to have been on top of it, though, because they were trying to test for it.
Oops, an extra "d" on "communicate" in the previous comment...not sure how to edit. Oh, well.
Post a Comment