"Doctors of reddit, have you had any exciting cases that have made you feel like Dr. House?"

"Any exciting mysteries that you were/weren't able to solve? If so, please elaborate!"

Top voted Reddit answers...

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.

WSJ Essay: Why Doctors Are Sick of Their Profession

"All too often these days, I find myself fidgeting by the doorway to my exam room, trying to conclude an office visit with one of my patients. When I look at my career at midlife, I realize that in many ways I have become the kind of doctor I never thought I'd be: impatient, occasionally indifferent, at times dismissive or paternalistic. Many of my colleagues are similarly struggling with the loss of their professional ideals."

"It could be just a midlife crisis, but it occurs to me that my profession is in a sort of midlife crisis of its own. In the past four decades, American doctors have lost the status they used to enjoy. In the mid-20th century, physicians were the pillars of any community. If you were smart and sincere and ambitious, at the top of your class, there was nothing nobler or more rewarding that you could aspire to become...."

"Consider what one doctor had to say on Sermo, the online community of more than 270,000 physicians:

"I wouldn't do it again, and it has nothing to do with the money. I get too little respect from patients, physician colleagues, and administrators, despite good clinical judgment, hard work, and compassion for my patients. Working up patients in the ER these days involves shotguning multiple unnecessary tests (everybody gets a CT!) despite the fact that we know they don't need them, and being aware of the wastefulness of it all really sucks the love out of what you do. I feel like a pawn in a moneymaking game for hospital administrators. There are so many other ways I could have made my living and been more fulfilled. The sad part is we chose medicine because we thought it was worthwhile and noble, but from what I have seen in my short career, it is a charade." (read more)

KLEM FM

The scene doesn't frighten anymore, but 1925 filmgoers were shocked at Lon Chaney, Sr.'s on-screen visage. Visual images and stills were tightly controlled in those days, so most everyone only heard about the scene before seeing it.

The comment thread under that video got me to thinking. Excerpt:

Comment: I cant help but laugh at those old movies, their acting is so over-the-top! 

Reply: Back then, theatre (which was pretty over-the-top until Constantine Stanislavsky came along and explored naturalism in acting) was all anyone knew. Not only was the acting 'over-the-top,' the filming was very 'stagey.'

I had to google Constantine Stanislavsky and I learned something new.

Chaney's parents were both deaf-mutes and he grew up with sign language as his "mother tongue." He didn't even learn to speak until he was old enough for school, even though there was nothing wrong with his speech or hearing. Later, his mother fell ill and young Chaney was left to care for her after she lost the use of her hands. They communicated with facial expressions. That explains why Chaney was so unique as Hollywood's first character actor. He was a skilled make-up artist as well. But Chaney did not make the transition to "talkies" -- he died of a throat hemorrhage in 1929.
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[added] Here is the original trailer. Also, 15-year old Carla Laemmle had a minor role in the film and she's still alive at age 104!

[added] Sadly, she passed away ten days after I wrote this.