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Medical student's apparent celiac disease responded to giardiasis treatment

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232 points BostonFern | 2 comments | 16 Oct 24 03:25 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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jim-jim-jim ◴[16 Oct 24 06:07 UTC] No.41856061[source]▶
I've been looking for relief from abdominal pain, bloating, poorly formed movements, and breathing problems for well over a year now. It started right after a round of antibiotics, which strikes me as a very clear cause-and-effect situation involving some sort of microbial imbalance.

I don't think restrictive diets are a great idea, because I want to stay healthy otherwise and ultimately restore that balance, but curiously enough, I've found that wheat might be exacerbating some of these symptoms—despite eating it without issue my whole life.

No matter how neutrally and deferentially I approach doctors with this info, I'm treated like a paranoiac for merely inquiring about certain possibilities like so-called SIBO. I'm pretty sure I'd get dragged straight to the loony bin if I ever mentioned parasites.

Sorry for making this about me, but I wrote all this to say: this guy is very lucky he's a medical student. Even with similar evidence, I have a hard time believing he'd get medicine (and respect) as a single mother. The moment she whipped out slides like he did, they'd be writing an antipsychotic Rx.

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vasco ◴[16 Oct 24 06:34 UTC] No.41856193[source]▶
You need to prove your knowledge to doctors contextually, and even then it's much easier if they are not actively giving you a consultation. Doctors don't respond well to randomly dropping theories on them. If you respond to something by dropping an inappropriate paper for the illness or ask about rare issues when common ones would fit they'll stop listening.

Most of the people a doctor gets either almost can't read or think they have all the diagnosis from "the internet". It's rare to have someone capable, who isn't going to jump to conclusions and just complicate everything, so I get why they discard most of what people tell them.

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hansvm ◴[16 Oct 24 14:27 UTC] No.41859413[source]▶
A technique I have a lot of success with is asking why <some observation> doesn't change their opinion. It leaves the doctor in a position of expertise and authority, so they're usually happy to spend the time teaching you. Normally I learn a lot about some gap in my medical knowledge, and sometimes the additional reflection changes the doctor's opinion and gives me better outcomes.
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LorenPechtel ◴[16 Oct 24 22:36 UTC] No.41864551{3}[source]▶
Depends on if their mind is made up. Yeah, I failed the food challenge test because you used the wrong thing! No, you can't use pork in place of ham--the trigger was something that gets added in the process of making it ham.
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1. hansvm ◴[16 Oct 24 23:04 UTC] No.41864790{4}[source]▶
Kind of. Even when their mind is made up, they're likely to try to answer (since the framing places them on a pedestal). Both you and the doctor will notice anything obviously wrong with the answer. I've met a few young doctors who would dig in their heels (different from explaining why they're right; if they're actually right and teach me why then I think that was an incredibly valuable opportunity), but you ought to, in most parts of the world, be able to fire them and find somebody actually willing to talk to you. Almost all of the time I meet doctors who handle the framework I set out exceptionally.

Your pork/ham comment is interesting. For other toxins/allergens/..., I see doctors very explicitly examining every possible extra ingredient/factor before even deigning to consider that the bulk solid might matter (e.g., most chocolate allergies are actually to soy lecithin or one of the other mixins). I'm surprised anyone would rule out a ham problem just because they tested one kind of pork.

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2. LorenPechtel ◴[19 Oct 24 01:04 UTC] No.41884819[source]▶
It's obvious he thought the problem was upstairs. If you're a medical mystery they're going to consider psych and some of them will consider it too much.