Last week marked our first experience with the so called "case study" that med students know and love. We're given a workup of a new admission, complete with chief complaint, past medical history, all that jazz, then they let us loose with our minuscule medical knowledge to run a differential diagnosis on the case.
Now anyone who's watched their fair share of House knows there is one unifying theme to all of the differential diagnosis they run through. No, its not House's asshole attitude or Dr. Cameron's thin shirts.
It's lupus.
Yes, no matter how bizarre the symptoms or the case, House and his crack team of whatever-kind-of-doctors they're supposed to be (here's a hint, such a doctor doesn't really exist) always have lupus in their differential when trying to solve the puzzle of that week's episode. One week the person even had lupus - which was a cause of great celebration (and drinking) for me and my friends.
So we were given our first case study, a poor 45 year old woman coming in with the responsibility of saving her life falling squarely on our shoulders. We start talking about symptoms, her family's medical history, her traveling habits, and begin to come up with a list of ailments most likely to be the cause of her problems. We narrow it down to a top 10 list, and sitting there squarely at #1 was...
Lupus.
Yes, that moment marked a defining checkpoint in the progression of my medical career. I have now reached the technical and mental proficiency of the fake doctors you see on TV. I couldn't be more proud. Maybe now should be the time to pitch myself as the subject of a new medical TV show...
3 comments:
Good guess, but it's not Lupus. Lupus is definately #2 on the Ddx, but fortunately that's not what the poor woman has. Hint. Begins with an "e", ends with "-itis".
Yeah, as soon as we saw the JVP was 14cm I knew she was in congestive heart failure and with a fever that some form of myocarditis was most likely (I thought endocarditis also). But that didn't come still round 2 after the physical findings.
Plus it's better for the story if I ignore that little detail, haha.
you guys are awefully bright for first years.
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