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My dad says he was the one to diagnose patient zero during the measles outbreak in New York during 1991, he says when he called CDC that friday, noone believed him, since it had been a pretty damn long time since anyone had seen it. He said the only reason he recognized it was because his little brother had gotten measles once, and the patient 0 had exact same symptom.Eventually he stared such a fuss that CDC did show up, and confirmed it was measles to which they put the kid into quarantine and began to do their thing.
Not a doctor but happened to my cousin.
She was pregnant with her first child and suffering from incredibly bad morning sickness, couldn't even smell food without throwing up, her chef partner even had to shave his head as the smell of his hair after work was too much. She was very confused, very weak, all round Not Right. Her partner kept taking her to hospital but they'd just get her hydrated and send her away again as they couldn't figure out why she was so weak/confused.
Until a doctor came along and looked into her eyes and saw she had rapid/unfocused eye movements all over the place. He immediately diagnosed her with Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome. It hadn't occurred to anyone else as it's a disease of primarily alcoholics, caused by a b vitamin deficiency. I think at the time hers was either the first or one of the first diagnosed cases of it in pregnancy in the UK.
She spent most of her pregnancy in hospital and lost her short term memory, which took a year or two after birth to come back fully. Her son spent some time in NICU, mainly because of the drugs she was on but he's a strapping 20 year old now.
When I was a 3rd yr medical student I did a rotation in pediatric neurology. We had a 7 yr old girl come in with seizures, near-total paralysis, and near-comatose drowsiness. Worst of all, she had gone completely blind over the course of two days.
It was suspicious for Guillain Barre Syndrome, but the way the paralysis started, the blindness, and the drowsiness didn't match. None of her tests were positive for anything. I went home and did some research and found case reports for people who had GBS with blindness. There's something called Bickerstaff Encephalitis that matched her symptoms perfectly. BE is an extremely rare subtype of Miller Fisher which itself is a subtype of GBS. There's something like 11 cases of BE a year in the US and I diagnosed one of them.
We started her on the treatment for BE (plasmapheresis) and she regained her sight and muscle function within a week. It was an amazing experience. Everyone on our team felt like a miracle worker--we discharged a happy, walking and talking 7 yr old girl who just 2 weeks before was completely blind and paralyzed.
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I actually got the measles in 1991 during the outbreak. I came down with it during a HS band trip to Durango. I came back to Houston and was admitted to the hospital a day or two later. My doctor kept swearing it was some sort of Rocky Mountain fever thing, and my parents and I kind of felt it was the measles by appearance.
About my 2nd or 3rd day, the doctor had just rounded on me and left the room. The local news came on, and they started with a story about the measles outbreak at my HS. I jammed the nurse's button and got the doctor to come back and see the news. They immediately began treatment. That night, I hit 106 temp, and I remember 2 nurses stripping me down trying to cool me off, which was enjoyable despite the fever. I recovered fine and was released about 24 hours after being properly diagnosed.
A couple of weeks later I was at my job at the grocery store and one of the nurses came through my line. I was a little flushed as we remembered each other.
Oh, my wife has had a few stories. Few were medical mysteries but still some good stories. The one mystery that I recall was when she worked neonatal ICU. One patient simply wasn't responding like a normal child. They were apparently healthy, but seemed to have no motivation. The child was uninterested in anything and just sort of was there.
They started to quiz the parents to find out if the mom had done any drugs or alcohol during pregnancy. They had not. After awhile, the parents finally admitted to being 1st cousins. I knew incest was taboo and all that, and I had heard about inbreeding issues, but I had no idea that it could be really bad. In this case, the child's Cerebrum never developed. It literally had the most basic brain to support human life, and no signs of anything more. The doctor verified this very simply. He shined a light into the child's ear, and my wife said the cranium lit up like a lamp. It was very sad. The child died a few days later.
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