I Cured My Patient, But What Was His Diagnosis?

By HANS DUVEFELT He cancelled his followup appointment because he was feeling fine. He didn’t see the point in wasting a Saturday to come to my clinic when he had lawns to mow and chores to do. Less than two weeks before that he was sitting on the exam table in my office, again and again nodding off, waking up surprised every time his wife prodded him. The stack of printouts from the emergency room illustrated all the normal testing they had done. He had experienced a brief episode of numbness in the left side of his face and felt tired with just a slight headache. When I saw him the headache was a bit more severe in the back of his head and down the right side of his neck. But his neck wasn’t stiff. His blood sugar was 87, normal for most people, but this man had a history of diabetes although his blood sugars had steadily improved over the past year. I told him to stop all his diabetic medications although I don’t think he took notice. His wife said she would make sure he stopped them. He had had all kinds of bloodwork and both a CT scan and an MRI of his brain. I couldn’t help worrying that he might have an aneurysm so we ordered an MRA as well. Until then my only hope of making him feel better was to make sure he wasn’t in relative hypoglycemia. A few days later he was back, not the least bit drowsy and with a blood sugar of 138. His MRA was scheduled for the following day. This time he had swelling, redness and extreme pain around h...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Medical Practice Physicians Primary Care Hans Duvefelt Source Type: blogs