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A Man Bedridden for 11 Years Invents a Surgery to Cure Himself.

Travo

Travo

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,580
South Carolina
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/07/27/he...urgery-trnd/index.html?r=https://www.cnn.com/

Doug Lindsay was 21 and starting his senior year at Rockhurst University, a Jesuit college in Kansas City, Missouri, when his world imploded.
After his first day of classes, the biology major collapsed at home on the dining room table, the room spinning around him.
It was 1999. The symptoms soon became intense and untreatable. His heart would race, he felt weak and he frequently got dizzy. Lindsay could walk only about 50 feet at a time and couldn't stand for more than a few minutes.
"Even lying on the floor didn't feel like it was low enough," he said.
The former high school track athlete had dreamed of becoming a biochemistry professor or maybe a writer for "The Simpsons."
Instead, he would spend the next 11 years mostly confined to a hospital bed in his living room in St. Louis, hamstrung by a mysterious ailment.
 
Lucas M. Thomas

Lucas M. Thomas

Editor-in-Chief of Nintendo Force Magazine
Verified
Oct 30, 2017
2,290
Kentucky
Fascinating. The headline of the article identifying him as a college dropout is a miss, though – there are too many negative connotations associated with that term. Like calling him a slacker right up front. It wasn't his choice to drop out; he was forced to by his ailment.
 
Rush_Khan

Rush_Khan

Member
Oct 26, 2017
860
Really inspiring story. I still can't comprehend the amount of medical literature he had to read in order to get to this hypothesis. Incredible.
 
DrROBschiz

DrROBschiz

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,466
its incredible how much information is created but not collated

Hopefully in the future all legitimate medical literature can be properly indexed, compiled and accessible to that the hard work and clues left by physicians before us can continue to lay the foundations for future cures.
 
Aske

Aske

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
5,572
Canadia
Utterly mind-blowing. I'm so glad he found a surgeon with the balls to perform his procedure. I imagine that was incredibly difficult to do, especially without traveling outside the US. This man is a true inspiration, and it sounds like he's dedicated his life to helping others with similar problems.
 
Fudgepuppy

Fudgepuppy

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,270
Isn't it really shitty that they did all of those tests, and never saw that two organs of his, were way bigger than they should've been?
 
Flygon

Flygon

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,374
I thought this was clickbait at first, but, wow, the sheer persistence of the guy! That's amazing.
 

Sounds

Member
Oct 27, 2017
928
This was an amazing story... of course CNN ruins the title with the college dropout clickbait bullshit.
 
GTAce

GTAce

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,162
Bonn, Germany
As someone bedridden since 16 years:
giphy.gif
 
Robochimp

Robochimp

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
2,677
Travo said:
His heart would race, he felt weak and he frequently got dizzy. Lindsay could walk only about 50 feet at a time and couldn't stand for more than a few minutes.
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It sounds like he has a much more severe version of what I've been dealing with for the last few years. It's fucking awful and I thought I was going to die.

I would take two steps and my body would signal for everything to go fucking crazy, instantly send my heart to like 130 bpm, dizziness and weakness. There were days at work where getting across the room felt like climbing Mt. Everest.

I'm only on one medication and things have improved slowly over the last year.
 

alexlf

The Fallen
Nov 1, 2017
740
ElectricKaibutsu said:
It says he still has to take a lot of medicine. I wonder why the surgery wasn't enough to cure him completely.
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I'd imagine complications from having hyperactive adrenal glands his whole life combined with no having them no longer producing anything at all on top of being bedridden for so long took a severe toll on his whole body.
 
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Rune Walsh

Rune Walsh

Too many boners
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,019
That's one hell of a story. I can only imagine what it must be like to be trapped inside your body like that and have the determination to fix it.
 
Zip

Zip

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,019
That is some inspiring stuff.

Also goes to show doctors are generally just slotting you in to the closest match they can think of based on their training/knowledge of symptoms, and they can be wrong.

A similar misdiagnosis of sorts nearly killed my father a few years ago. He more or less recovered, but they never figured out what was wrong or why their attempted treatment only nearly killed him.
 
MajesticSoup

MajesticSoup

Banned
Feb 22, 2019
1,935
Millions of internet webMD doctors vindicated.

Somewhat similiar story. My elbows would flare up weekly to the point where I couldnt straighten them. Went to a rheumatologist but he couldnt figure out why. Even stuck a needle in the swelling when I had an episode. It was a dead end there but one day I just decided to reduce my gluten in my diet. And lo and behold I havent had a flare up in almost a year now. Apparently Im gluten sensitive, but not quite celiac level.
 
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meowdi gras

meowdi gras

Member
Feb 24, 2018
12,611
"Incredible", "amazing", "inspiring", yes, Lindsay's story is certainly all of those. However, the cynic in me can't help but see the dark side of his experience: that of professionals ostensibly trained to help the sick who instead fall back on their degrees and monstrous egos when they're confused by a highly-unusual malady, labeling a suffering patient's condition psychosomatic and referring him to a shrink.

Dunno, maybe I'm a bit overly-sensitive to the subject, what with witnessing my mom being doubted and abused for years by doctors too far up their own asses to care enough to help her with her various autoimmune issues.
 
neon_dream

neon_dream

Member
Dec 18, 2017
3,644
O-Zips said:
Also goes to show doctors are generally just slotting you in to the closest match they can think of based on their training/knowledge of symptoms, and they can be wrong.
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It's called the law of parsimony: common things are common.

Doctors search for 2 things:
1. What's most likely
2. What's most dangerous

In diagnosing someone they look for what's most likely based on the presentation as well as "can't miss" diagnoses that may be life threatening. In 99.9% of cases, that turns out to be the right answer. For instance, a young man with chest pain reproducible by pressing on the ribs is PROBABLY having some sort of musculoskeletal problem (inflammation of the ribs, fracture, etc) but they COULD be having a heart attack or heart condition (unlikely). So the workup might include an EKG and troponin levels, even though heart damage is unlikely in a young healthy person, because it would be dangerous to overlook it.

In something like this, an extraordinarily rare condition that has no precedent in literature or practice, doctors, for obvious reasons, may not know the answer. In such cases experts, like endocrinologists, may send the patient even higher up the chain of expertise. For instance, an extraordinarily rare patient may be sent to the National Institute of Health for further diagnostic evaluation by physicians who are also research experts in specific fields.
 
Zip

Zip

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,019
neon_dream said:
It's called the law of parsimony: common things are common.

Doctors search for 2 things:
1. What's most likely
2. What's most dangerous

In diagnosing someone they look for what's most likely based on the presentation as well as "can't miss" diagnoses that may be life threatening. In 99.9% of cases, that turns out to be the right answer. For instance, a young man with chest pain reproducible by pressing on the ribs is PROBABLY having some sort of musculoskeletal problem (inflammation of the ribs, fracture, etc) but they COULD be having a heart attack or heart condition (unlikely). So the workup might include an EKG and troponin levels, even though heart damage is unlikely in a young healthy person, because it would be dangerous to overlook it.

In something like this, an extraordinarily rare condition that has no precedent in literature or practice, doctors, for obvious reasons, may not know the answer. In such cases experts, like endocrinologists, may send the patient even higher up the chain of expertise. For instance, an extraordinarily rare patient may be sent to the National Institute of Health for further diagnostic evaluation by physicians who are also research experts in specific fields.
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Doesn't go against what I said. Most of the time things fit into what is common, of course.
 
neon_dream

neon_dream

Member
Dec 18, 2017
3,644
O-Zips said:
Doesn't go against what I said. Most of the time things fit into what is common, of course.
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Not every reply is the start of an argument. Sometimes it's just conversation.

The Law of Parsimony is a principle taught during medical school. Healthcare is not just knowledge and diagnostic expertise. It's also providing care in the real world with, sometimes, limited resource and time demands. For example, emergency doctors are more concerned with providing fast, efficient healthcare as they have high numbers of patients to see as well as the responsibility of allocating hospital resources (e.g. deciding which patients to admit to inpatient status to be further worked up by specialists).
 
killerrin

killerrin

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,237
Toronto
Not the best headline. Titles, subtitles, headings and more. The text is written kind of clickbaity around the edges. The rest of the article is a pretty good inspiring story.

Thats honestly amazing what he was able to accomplish. I'm glad he managed to solve his problem and go on to help others who were in a similar situation to himself.
 

Dongs Macabre

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,284
I find it weird how the article keeps presenting it as "DOCTORS DIDN'T BELIEVE HIM!" when they generally seemed pretty helpful.
 
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