A patient, 54 yrs old, male came into my clinic complaining of chronic back pains. He had been feeling this pain since 4 months ago and have been told that it could be muscle aches. He had been to so many doctors and given so many medications and found no relief; cough medications, muscle relaxants, pain killers and all kinds of analgesics including opoids. NO relief. As a last recourse, he came to me because of a mutual friend ( always happens in my practice).
I did a lot of workups including a CAT SCAN of the chest. Lo and behold, small minute lesions were found in his lungs and a marked destruction of his chest vertebra. After the CATSCAN, he revealed that he was a chain smoker during his younger days up to 2007. And then, he also revealed that there is numbness in his lower extremities.
Oftentimes, in my career, patients keep facts from their doctors only to reveal them when we find something dreadful for fear that it could influence our diagnosis or our management decisions.
Far from the truth, what we see and what we hear in the history will always make the diagnosis. Some people think that keeping secrets could help them retain some kind of control of their medical destiny. It does not help any most especially if it is cancer.
Watch for the result of the biopsy of the lytic lesions of the THORACIC VERTEBRA to be done tomorrow.
I did a lot of workups including a CAT SCAN of the chest. Lo and behold, small minute lesions were found in his lungs and a marked destruction of his chest vertebra. After the CATSCAN, he revealed that he was a chain smoker during his younger days up to 2007. And then, he also revealed that there is numbness in his lower extremities.
Oftentimes, in my career, patients keep facts from their doctors only to reveal them when we find something dreadful for fear that it could influence our diagnosis or our management decisions.
Far from the truth, what we see and what we hear in the history will always make the diagnosis. Some people think that keeping secrets could help them retain some kind of control of their medical destiny. It does not help any most especially if it is cancer.
Watch for the result of the biopsy of the lytic lesions of the THORACIC VERTEBRA to be done tomorrow.
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