Health Scare
A few years ago my brother was diagnosed with a kidney disorder that was damaging his kidneys. A few weeks ago we learned that it was genetic. My other brother got scanned and he came up positive as well, confirming that hypothesis which put the rest of us in danger. It's a dominant trait, which means at least one of my parents had it. I had a 50% chance of having it as well. I came down for Thanksgiving a day early so that Dad, Mom, and I could get an ultrasound "off the record" from one of his radiologist friends.
It turns out that we're all clean. Not just that, but my youngest brother who got the second positive diagnosis is probably clean as well. He's a doctor, he borrowed a hospital sonogram machine and got an ER doc friend to look at it, but neither of them are radiologists and it's difficult to make this diagnosis without years of training. Everyone has small cysts in their healthy kidneys, which may have misled the ER doc.
A few thoughts.
Medicine is hard. Even if you've graduated from medical school like my brother, even if you've completed your residency like his ER doc friend, even if you've been practicing for decades like Dad, unless you're operating within your area of expertise it's easy to make a mistake. All knowledge is probabilistic and tentative, based on incomplete evidence which can be overturned by new evidence. The ER doctor's guess is better than a layperson's guess but not as good as an expert's guess, and a consensus of second opinions is better than any individual expert's opinion. This is how we figure stuff out.
From the time that I first got the news till Wednesday when I got the "all clear" I felt deep, shooting pains in my kidneys and lower back that I hadn't felt before. Dad reported the same thing. But if there was anything wrong, it was something that had been wrong for years. Before our sonograms we both recognized that our symptoms were "all in our heads" whether or not we had anything. This doesn't mean our experience wasn't "real", it doesn't mean we weren't in genuine discomfort, but it does mean that we needed psychological rather than physical care.
I can see how some "natural miracle cure" stories end up happening. If my youngest brother had started taking herbs, supplements, or something else that's what he would credit for his "recovery" when subsequent sonograms came up clean. "Doctors told him that he would be sick for the rest of his life, but after taking $X he's completely cured!" It feels a little reaching to say "maybe they were never sick in the first place" but that's what would have happened this time.
It turns out that we're all clean. Not just that, but my youngest brother who got the second positive diagnosis is probably clean as well. He's a doctor, he borrowed a hospital sonogram machine and got an ER doc friend to look at it, but neither of them are radiologists and it's difficult to make this diagnosis without years of training. Everyone has small cysts in their healthy kidneys, which may have misled the ER doc.
A few thoughts.
Medicine is hard. Even if you've graduated from medical school like my brother, even if you've completed your residency like his ER doc friend, even if you've been practicing for decades like Dad, unless you're operating within your area of expertise it's easy to make a mistake. All knowledge is probabilistic and tentative, based on incomplete evidence which can be overturned by new evidence. The ER doctor's guess is better than a layperson's guess but not as good as an expert's guess, and a consensus of second opinions is better than any individual expert's opinion. This is how we figure stuff out.
From the time that I first got the news till Wednesday when I got the "all clear" I felt deep, shooting pains in my kidneys and lower back that I hadn't felt before. Dad reported the same thing. But if there was anything wrong, it was something that had been wrong for years. Before our sonograms we both recognized that our symptoms were "all in our heads" whether or not we had anything. This doesn't mean our experience wasn't "real", it doesn't mean we weren't in genuine discomfort, but it does mean that we needed psychological rather than physical care.
I can see how some "natural miracle cure" stories end up happening. If my youngest brother had started taking herbs, supplements, or something else that's what he would credit for his "recovery" when subsequent sonograms came up clean. "Doctors told him that he would be sick for the rest of his life, but after taking $X he's completely cured!" It feels a little reaching to say "maybe they were never sick in the first place" but that's what would have happened this time.