Anyone Else Love The Mystery Diagnosis Show

[OceanAnnie]

I love the show, Mystery Diagnosis! I've been taping it and I've been amazed by people's stories. I find myself glued to the TV and sometimes crying over people's medical troubles. Always glad to see a good resolution in the end. Haven't seen anyone that's died due to a lack of diagnosis. Thank goodness.

Anyone else love this show?

 

[Feralpeg]

I like it. I also like the Trauma show as well.

 

[monkey68]

I like it too, but sometimes the answer is so obvious, I really wonder what kind of hack doctors they were going to before somebody decided to check the obvious. I remember one episode where it was clear right from the start that the woman had hypothyroid. I got it in 5 minutes, and yet nobody thought to check thyroid levels? Another time, i was shouting at the screen that the patient had PCOS! And supposedly, she went 10 years before somebody thought to check her hormone levels to look for PCOS. And I'm just in medical school, I was a second year at the time, and if I knew it, why couldn't these doctors?

 

[clarabelle]

monkey
I am an RN who hasn't worked as an RN for 13 years -and sometimes I diagnose them!
My DH is a family doc and he gets them most of the time (not all)

I think some of these doctors truly are crappy.

I also think that sometimes these patients are doctor hopping.
They see one physician one time and then another the next -instead of parking their butts in the office and getting someone to really listen to them.
I am not blaming the patient -but I think sometimes the patient is better off sticking with one doctor for several appointments.
Does that make sense?

 

[OceanAnnie]

monkey
I am an RN who hasn't worked as an RN for 13 years -and sometimes I diagnose them!
My DH is a family doc and he gets them most of the time (not all)

I think some of these doctors truly are crappy.

I also think that sometimes these patients are doctor hopping.
They see one physician one time and then another the next -instead of parking their butts in the office and getting someone to really listen to them.
I am not blaming the patient -but I think sometimes the patient is better off sticking with one doctor for several appointments.
Does that make sense?

I can see both sides to a point.

The frustration is palpable with so many of these patients. They don't feel as though they are heard. A lot of them don't think they are taken seriously, so they move on. I can't blame them for that. If a doctor is truly trying to get to the bottom of an illness that's one thing. But totally dismissing an illness time and time again, I'd move on too!

 

[clarabelle]

I agree with you.

I don't blame the patient for moving on -but sometimes I think it would be to their benefit to stay with the doctor for another appointment or two -instead of moving on.

 

[mickeyboat]

I have to remember that some of these cases happened many years ago. For example, PCOS is a relatively new diagnosis. It took almost 3 years for me to be diagnosed with PCOS, and I was under the care of a reproductive endocrinologist.

I really like Mystery Diagnosis, but sometimes when I start having weird symptoms, I think I have something like on of those issues.

 

[monkey68]

monkey
I am an RN who hasn't worked as an RN for 13 years -and sometimes I diagnose them!
My DH is a family doc and he gets them most of the time (not all)

I think some of these doctors truly are crappy.

I also think that sometimes these patients are doctor hopping.
They see one physician one time and then another the next -instead of parking their butts in the office and getting someone to really listen to them.
I am not blaming the patient -but I think sometimes the patient is better off sticking with one doctor for several appointments.
Does that make sense?

Does make sense. When you start doctor hopping, you have to repeat the history over and over, and it's possible you forget to tell the new doc something, or start thinking that unrelated things are part of the symptoms, etc. If it's something chronic, it could be that they just forget how it originally started maybe, but if they stick with the same one for a while, that's already in the history.

Another one that really bothered me was a kid, I think around 3 years old, who had projectile vomiting almost his entire life, and it took them 3 years to even consider doing an abdominal x-ray?? The x-ray showed that the problem was a diaphragmatic hernia, and by the time they found it, it was very large. I honestly couldn't figure out why it took so long for someone to think... gee... maybe we should see what's going on since it's not normal for a 3 year old to be vomitting so much??

 

[OceanAnnie]

Does make sense. When you start doctor hopping, you have to repeat the history over and over, and it's possible you forget to tell the new doc something, or start thinking that unrelated things are part of the symptoms, etc. If it's something chronic, it could be that they just forget how it originally started maybe, but if they stick with the same one for a while, that's already in the history.

Another one that really bothered me was a kid, I think around 3 years old, who had projectile vomiting almost his entire life, and it took them 3 years to even consider doing an abdominal x-ray?? The x-ray showed that the problem was a diaphragmatic hernia, and by the time they found it, it was very large. I honestly couldn't figure out why it took so long for someone to think... gee... maybe we should see what's going on since it's not normal for a 3 year old to be vomitting so much??

I just saw that one tonight! I also found it astounding that it took so long to diagnose that child! Did the surgeon ever state it was probably congenital? The history sure made it seem that way. Given the child's history with the doctor continuing to dismiss it as a virus or whatnot, I think I would have gone to a different doctor or specialist in that case. Sometimes the doctors don't take the history into consideration.

 

[monkey68]

I just saw that one tonight! I also found it astounding that it took so long to diagnose that child! Did the surgeon ever state it was probably congenital? The history sure made it seem that way. Given the child's history with the doctor continuing to dismiss it as a virus or whatnot, I think I would have gone to a different doctor or specialist in that case. Sometimes the doctors don't take the history into consideration.

I saw it a while ago, so the details are a bit fuzzy, I'm not sure now if it was a diaphragmatic hernia, or a hiatal hernia, but either way, it was some sort of hernia that caused his stomach to enter his thoracic cavity. I can understand at first thinking it's just reflux, since it is common in babies. And then thinking it's a virus when it presented again. But once there's a pattern going, I would hope that any reasonable pediatrician would want to investigate further. On the one hand, it's very easy to sit back on the couch and criticize, and hindsight is always 20/20. Doctor's get so used to seeing common things over and over again, that when something uncommon happens, especially when it may look like something common, it's probably more difficult to think of the uncommon, especially since it's not like he's seeing the kid, and only that kid. He was probably seeing hundreds of kids between that kid's visits, with many of them having stomach viruses or food poisoning. But still, some of the stuff that happens on that show really makes you wonder what the doctor was thinking.

On the flip side, I remember watching an episode, when all of a sudden, my friend's neurosurgeon appeared. I don't remember the diagnosis, but it was something with the brain. I got quite a kick out of seeing him on there for some reason. I've met his surgeon before, and I knew he was fabulous, but I guess seeing him on TV made me realize just how good (or lucky) this guy is.

 

[dis-happy]

So many episodes where the doctor can't figure out what the problem is so they stick the patient on anti-depressants (because it must all be in their head, right???). Makes me so mad.

I've thought about sending in my story. I knew there was a problem, kept having all these weird symptons, and they kept telling me everything was fine. Turned out I had a form of cancer with an incidence of 1 in 80,000 and even so, I didn't fall into the proper progression for my form of it. Happy to say I'm still here today, in spite of everyone who missed the ball.

 

[Disney Ella]

Some of the cases on the show would be hard to diagnose, but in other cases, I think the people are just too trusting of their doctors and don't seek out the 2nd or 3rd opinions that they need. The one story that really bothered me was the story of the young woman in college who was having trouble breathing, getting tired, etc. She went to her family doctor multiple times and to an asthma specialist who told her that her problems were all in her head. She would come home from school and just collapse on the couch because she was so worn out and her parents told her she was being dramatic because a doctor said nothing was wrong with her. Finally, a few years after the symptoms started, she saw a doctor who ordered a chest X-ray! There was a big lung tumor caused by Hodgkin's disease. Hodgkin's disease has such a high cure rate but because this woman's case wasn't caught early, the cancer has come back at least 2 times and her prognosis is not that great.

How can you see someone complaining of chronic breathing problems and not order a chest X-ray? If that girl was my child, I would have been dragging her to other doctors, regardless of her age, and would not have assumed that her problem was all in her head just because one doctor said it was.