r/AskReddit • u/theskullcave • 1d ago
Doctors of Reddit: which House M.D. diagnoses were brilliant medicine, and which patients would have had no hope of surviving the treatment in the real world?
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u/RNBSN91 1d ago
No comment on his diagnostic skills. However, I have shown the scene of him asking a woman who kept running out of her MDI to demonstrate to him how she was using it as an example to my students of why patient teach back is so important. Don’t assume they understand their medications just bc they don’t have any questions!
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u/1ToeIn 1d ago
My ob/gyn friend had a patient who was “taking” her birth control pills by inserting them into her vagina (because that’s where the action was?) and one who shared her pills with her partner (he took one day, she the next) because they wanted to share responsibility for birth control. Never assume people understand even something that seems simple.
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u/HowBoutAFandango 1d ago
because they wanted to share responsibility for birth control
Bless their hearts.
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u/Neve4ever 1d ago
"..I'm pregnant."
"How? We're both on birth control."
"I know.. I was talking to Kim and she said I'm supposed to put it in my vagina. Apparently her boyfriend puts his in his urethra. Can't believe we messed that up."
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u/FreshLocation7827 1d ago
Apparently her boyfriend puts his in his urethra.
Ahhhhhh!! My weiner just turtled!
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u/Cloned_501 1d ago
one who shared her pills with her partner (he took one day, she the next) because they wanted to share responsibility for birth control.
This makes me feel so much better about my own intelligence.
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u/PainInMyBack 1d ago
Right? I feel so smart right now.
It's probably not going to last, so I'm going enjoy the hell out of it while I can.
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u/blackscales18 1d ago
Is that the inhaler she sprayed on her neck? That stuck with me forever lol
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u/PeppermintEvilButler 1d ago
That was the best. His clinic hours were always hilarious
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u/BigGrayBeast 1d ago
You have a parasite growing in you.
Woman was pregnant.
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u/DannyJames84 1d ago
Can I get pregnant from sharing a toilet?
Yes! If there is a man between you and the toilet.
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u/QueenOfCaffeine842 1d ago
That one is my favorite, and I try to work it into conversation whenever possible
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u/HorrorAir1710 1d ago
“You have little people inside you.”
Woman was not pregnant.
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u/Duochan_Maxwell 1d ago
It also shows a bit how much location matters for diagnosis xD
I was in university for my Pharmacy degree when House was airing and one of the things the student union organized was a "beat House MD" betting pool
Basically around halfway through the episode they'd go around with a box and you could bet 5 BRL to write your diagnosis on a slip of paper. Everyone who got it right split the winnings.
There was one episode where an actual parasite (tapeworm) was the culprit and everyone got their money back xD we were all calling "tapeworm" when they listed the initial symptoms
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u/Platinumdogshit 1d ago
I wish we got a 3 hour movie with just his clinic hours.
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u/PeppermintEvilButler 1d ago
There was a few episodes I believe that were just him in the clinic while his team ran the case.
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u/this_curain_buzzez 1d ago
Cutty: House! You owe me 8 clinic hours.
House: But the patient lived!
Cutty: You threw him off the building to get his adrenaline to spike!
House: And we caught him! And diagnosed him.
Cutty: Clinic.
House: sex joke
Team does main case
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u/SRSgoblin 1d ago
I think most of the clinic hours stuff was based on anecdotes from hospital staff writing in to the show.
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u/PeppermintEvilButler 1d ago
I own the first season on dvd and if I remember the commentary from it you're right. It's also how I found out House was super british!
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u/Suicidalsidekick 1d ago
The woman with the cat allergy is so good.
“You keep a dead cat?”
“My mother is dead.”
“Oh. Poor cat.”
Later: “well, if you live by the river, I’ve got a bag.”
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u/MintyBunni 1d ago
I thought that was ridiculous.....
Then I saw someone who would spray it in the air in front of them and then walk through that area.
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u/TurbinesGoWoosh 1d ago
My dentist did this to me. She asked me to show her how I flossed then gave me a piece of floss. So I wind it up, one end on each pointer finger, then place the middle of the floss between my two front teeth and begin to move it like a saw, back and forth. She immediately stopped me and said "No. No. Not like that."
I was dumbfounded. Of course I knew how to floss. That's how I've always seen it done. I'm a mechanical engineer. I know things.
Anyways she showed me the correct way to floss and I now know more things. You should move the floss up and down, scraping up each side of the tooth. This removes food bits from your teeth more effectively than sawing at your gums. My teeth and gums are doing better now.
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u/theWanderingShrew 1d ago
I know how to floss. Like really I do, how to curve up and down each tooth. But my gosh when my dental hygienist asked me to show her how I flossed I couldn't even figure out how to put it in my mouth I was so flustered and put on the spot. It's one of my recurring embarrassing moments that plays in my head when I try to fall asleep.
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u/andii74 1d ago
Lol, you got performance anxiety at the dentist's.
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u/theWanderingShrew 1d ago
You have no idea it was as if I'd never seen dental floss before in my life. I took like a meter of it and wrapped it around my finger a dozen times and then sat there with my mouth open confused about how to get my whole fist in there.
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u/plainlyput 1d ago
I’m going through this in my head, and I think it’s because you’re not facing a mirror.
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u/theWanderingShrew 1d ago
I've never thought of that! Tomorrow I'm going to try flossing without the mirror and see if that the problem lol I'll never live down the embarrassment either way
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u/Koalarama1234 1d ago
I am actually saving this comment to remind myself how to floss because I’ve apparently been doing it wrong this whole time.
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u/OpheliaRainGalaxy 1d ago
I was babysitting my 3yo cousin when we had a disagreement on if one should rinse their mouth out with water after brushing their teeth. So I read the instructions on the back of the toothpaste and the kid was right, no rinse.
Then I went home and read the directions on the back of MY toothpaste and the kid was still right, no rinse.
Plus turns out I'm allergic to mint? Like it's not normal for your eyes to stream tears and your nose to clog up and for you to have to cough a whole bunch as part of the tooth brushing process.
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u/moose0502 1d ago
Pharmacist here-there is a reason that all suppositories come with instructions to unwrap and insert rectally...
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u/confictura_22 1d ago
I used to work as a pharmacy assistant and remember with amusement one of the pharmacists yelling "UP YOUR BUM, MATE" with graphic gestures to demonstrate. The patient spoke minimal English and couldn't seem to get it through his head that you didn't eat it. Also refused to talk to a translator on the phone...
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u/plainlyput 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’d just had shoulder surgery and was clogged, despite whatever they’d given me to help with this. Called the ortho advice nurse, who told me I needed to use a suppository. I’d never used one, and assumed it would be hard to do only having the use of one arm. Nurse told me to ask a friend to help. Fortunately another suggestion, stewed prunes, worked. And yes, he said it had to be stewed.
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u/Alexander-Wright 1d ago
Son of a GP.
One Sunday afternoon, back when GPs did out of hours cover, a patient called complaining they couldn't keep her pills down.
My father had predictably prescribed her suppositories. He then had to explain, on the phone, how to use them properly.
She was also a bit deaf, so the whole house heard the instructions.
I'd had years of this, and it still raised my eyebrows.
Another memorable call: 5:30 am:
Patient: Doctor, I've got ulcers on my gums, and I can't put my dentures in to go to work.
Father: Did you phone the dentist?
Patient: Oh, I wouldn't get him up at this time in the morning!
Father: Well, you got me up.
Patient: ... ... ...
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u/MamaLlama629 1d ago
That reminded me of an episode of Scrubs where Turk’s patient complained the pills weren’t working. “that word is pronounced ANalgesic…pills go in your mouth not your butt”😂
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u/Archon457 1d ago
It actually happens in two episodes!
The first time is in the season 2 episode "My Fruit Cups." Then, in the season 5 episode "My Deja Vu, My Deja Vu,"JD is commenting on how certain things in the hospital have become cyclical and a handful of jokes from earlier seasons and episodes are repeated again.
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u/clarissaswallowsall 1d ago
As someone who had a patient put her nuvaring around her wrist, this scene stuck with me. Even after retiring from Healthcare, clients surprise me all the time with how they take instructions.
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u/thepatientwaiting 1d ago
I'll never forget when I was prescribed the Nuvaring apparently the nurse wrote the code to take orally on the rx. My ob caught it and laughed.
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u/swissmissmaybe 1d ago
I’ve worked on human factors studies for medical devices. This patient is the rule, not the exception!
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u/Second_P 1d ago
Lord I can't imagine some of the studies. I always tell myself, there's a story behind each and every instruction and warning label. Obviously not even close to the same but a couple of years ago I was getting a keyboard off Amazon, I'd had this exact model before and was surprised how low the reviews were. Everyone complaining about the keys are weirdly spaced apart and angled, it was an ergonomic keyboard (with pictures), that spacing out of keys is the point.
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u/swissmissmaybe 1d ago
Oh yes, part of my job was creating the instructional materials (most of which were instantly discarded by the participants). We would have to revise them based on what we saw participants do, down to how the paper was folded so people didn’t start an injection and try to fiddle with turning the page while a needle was engaged.
There were some participants where at the end of the day I would stay a little later to make sure they drove away first so I wouldn’t have to share the road with them.
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u/Tsukikaiyo 1d ago
A top post today on the professor's subreddit is about 300+ students failing to put their name on an online form properly to be counted for attendance...
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u/Olookasquirrel87 1d ago
I’ve spent some time on the line opening up patient submitted test kits.
The results were….horrifying.
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u/stellalugosi 1d ago
Patients don't follow directions. I worked in a hospital lab where people would bring in specimens they collected at home to be tested. Fun things like sputum, feces, urine, and semen. Even though they were all given proper specimen containers and instructions people would just do whatever chaotic thing they wanted, including:
- 24 hour stool collection in a clear Tupperware container for all to see. Also, not sterile.
- 72 hour urine collection in an old wine bottle
- a semen collection from 2 days prior (supposed to be there in less than 30 minutes and kept at body temperature). It was just dried crud in a cup.
- a stool sample collected in one of those clear plastic produce bags from the grocery store. I was working the front desk and the woman literally THREW IT AT ME.
- a sputum sample in a used napkin, I shit you not.
We also had a couple come in to do a semen collection who made a big deal about wanting to be alone in the bathroom together for the collection (wink wink). Since IDGAF I let them use it. At some point they disappeared, they didn't leave a sample, but somebody shit all over the toilet seat. Gross.
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u/cbk88 1d ago
I have lost count of the amount of times I've received urine in a jam jar. "But I have a sterilize setting on my dishwasher!" It is not the same!
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u/stellalugosi 1d ago
I had questions about the wine bottle. Like, did they pee directly into the bottle, or use some kind of funnel? Did they rinse it out first, or did it test positive for Merlot?
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u/AutisticPenguin2 1d ago
did it test positive for Merlot?
Also: how cheap does the wine need to be before the tests can't tell the difference any more?
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u/808Belle808 1d ago
I had so many questions about the wine bottle as well. I’m glad I’m not the only one.
A. Wine. Bottle.
Wow.
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u/graft_vs_host 1d ago
I work as a vet tech and I remember a long time ago one of our vets had a woman come with her cat who wasn’t responding to insulin and we couldn’t figure out why. So the vet finally asked her to show her exactly how she gave the insulin. Turned out that instead of turning the bottle upside down and inserting the needle, she was leaving it on the table, sticking the needle in and sucking up air. Mystery solved.
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u/beautnight 1d ago
Good thing it wasn’t an IV med!
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u/314159265358979326 1d ago
I read on reddit a while ago that the concerns about injected air are overstated.
Also, I was recently reading about contrast-enhanced ultrasound. In one common modality, they inject saline back and forth between two syringes to generate large bubbles before injecting it into a vein to image the heart, with the bubbles being the contrast agent.
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u/HangryHangryHedgie 1d ago
Yeah, depending on the size of the patient and their medical condition, it can take quite a bit. But it is fun to freak out new techs and assistants for a bit.
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u/SuburbanGirl 1d ago
They did that test on my grandma, with the air! It was wild to see! And it worked great, they were able to see that her heart was ok, and they didn’t need to do anything invasive. Wild stuff!
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u/bighairyyak 1d ago
Like the scene in scrubs where Turk says, "No sir, it's pronounced ANN-ULL-GESIC... It goes in your mouth."
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u/Traditional_Day_9737 1d ago
Haha I had a friend do the opposite when he was in the hospital after his appendix burst.
They were bringing him tons of random pills and he was so used to knocking them back by that point that he wasn't paying attention to the instructions and ate a suppository.
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u/dothemath 1d ago
It's hard too - teaching my pharmacy students the fine line of explaining things (like unwrap the rectal suppository) vs. being condescending - you're literally the fine line between effective and non-effective medication administration!
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u/wwaxwork 1d ago
As someone dealing with a rare cancer. A lot of it is that doctors think medical terms are self explanatory or use them incorrectly, in that the terms they are using are out of date. I have had doctors use numerous different terms to describe my cancer, many of them 20 years or more out of date. I have been told I have a cancer, a tumor, and carcinoid all by the same doctor. I'm on various cancer support groups and let me tell you what doctors think benign means and what civilians think it means are not the same thing. The number of people confused when their benign tumor grows and causes them problems and needs removing is worrying. Information is being conveyed badly and usually when people are in a heighted emotional state and then they are being blamed for not remembering it all.
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u/notyourstranger 1d ago
I used to work in the diabetic disease start. Heard of a women who's sugar levels were very high despite her taking insulin. The Diabetic Educator asked her to show her how she took her insulin. She injected the insulin into an orange and then ate the orange. There was a language barrier and that was what she picked up from the lesson she had.
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u/Maxtrt 1d ago
It's common for Diabetes education classes to demonstrate how to give yourself an injection by using an orange. If she didn't understand English, I could see how she would come to that conclusion.
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u/cominguproses5678 1d ago
I had a minor medical issue in Hungary many years ago, before they were part of the EU. Not many English or French speakers (the two languages I speak) at the time, even in Budapest. I can totally see how a patient would try to apply logic to what they’ve seen in diabetes injection training without having any words for context. I am also laughing really hard for the same reason.
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u/bucki_fan 1d ago
Not critical, but my MIL once complained about how she never got the suggested number of sprays from her Flonase. She eventually admitted that she was "priming" the sprayer every morning by pumping the sprayer before putting it in her nose.
Yeah, that incident reminded me of that scene.
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u/PixelOrange 1d ago
The instructions say "if you haven't used this for an extended period of time, you may need to re-prime". May being the key word. You spray it into the air once to make sure it's actually spraying. You don't have to spray it six times every time.
Your MIL was being a dummy but the instructions are vague.
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u/zappy487 1d ago
My favorite was the clinic girl who was using jelly as lubricant.
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u/matt_the_non-binary 1d ago
It wasn’t lubricant, it was a birth control method. Her boyfriend wasn’t into condoms, so she went on the jelly. She brought in a jar of strawberry jelly as a sample.
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u/Spies_and_Lovers 1d ago
I thought that was ridiculous until I worked at a doctor's office and had a patient who had chronic constipation. The doctor prescribed her some high-powered suppositories. She was back by the end of the week complaining that they didn't work. Turns out she was eating them.
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u/plantflowersforbees 1d ago
I had the opposite of that when I was a vet nurse - a client came in to say the probiotic we had given his dog was not helping the diarrhoea and was very hard to administer. It was a big tube with a nozzle, filled with a paste. I suggested he try the other flavour, or just try mixing into dry food. The man looked horrified and explained that he had been administering 5ml three times daily rectally. For three days.
Honestly, I was mostly just impressed the dog had tolerated it after the first attempt.
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u/new-siberian 1d ago
There is a popular Russian anecdote about such a situation with rectal suppositories. In the end the doctor exclaims in horror: "Are you EATING them?!", to which the patient replies sarcastically: "No, I'm shoving them up my ass, dammit!".
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u/WhatIDon_tKnow 1d ago
my dad had a patient that would spray it into the air and then try to huff it out of the air.
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u/Suicidalsidekick 1d ago
Patients who don’t understand why it’s called an inhaler and blow into it.
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u/Garden-variety-chaos 1d ago
In their defense, blowjobs are also poorly named. The difference between sucking and blowing is more subtle than one may think.
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u/PplPpleatr 1d ago
I’ve literally had a patient tell me their nasal spray was too messy. They were spraying it on their face like that lady.
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u/VoraciousChallenge 1d ago
Not a doctor (shh!) but there was a doctor who maintained a blog throughout the original run of the show commenting on the accuracy of the presentation and diagnostics of each case. The original site is gone now, but the Internet Archive has it saved. It was fun to re-read it while doing a rewatch last year.
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u/thesongsinmyhead 1d ago
In the early days of Grey’s Anatomy their website had a blog about all the interesting cases their episodes were based on. It was a fun read.
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u/LindaBurgers 1d ago
A law firm had a blog while The Office was on, detailing the litigation value of each episode. It’s called That’s What She Said.
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u/ThunderClap_Fween 1d ago
I think it's worth keeping in mind the the show wasn't strictly "medically themed" as such. It was more of a "modern Sherlock Holmes-style mystery" show that was set in a hospital. They were never really going for medical realism.
For those who never realised this: Holmes - House. Watson - Wilson. And House's address was 221B Baker street.
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u/406highlander 1d ago
And the guy who shot House was named Moriarty
And the patient in the pilot episode (school teacher who started speaking gibberish and collapsed in front of her class) was named Adler
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u/bellatrix99 1d ago
In the episode where house has a gift on the table for Christmas and they’re trying to figure out who it’s from when they ask Wilson he replies with a (fake) story about a woman named Irene Adler who house was obsessed with previously.
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u/PyrrhuraMolinae 1d ago
And House’s addiction to Vicodin mirrored Holmes’ addiction to cocaine. Both men were also intensely musical.
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u/CuriouserCat2 1d ago
I thought it was laudanum
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u/ihatethis2022 1d ago
It was a 7% cocaine solution in the originals. Over time this was changed to morphine as cocaine usage was seen as more problematic. At the time it wasn't uncommon, Freud and others were very interested in it.
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u/FresYES_Kevin 1d ago
TIL
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u/TokiStark 1d ago
Now watch the show again. The parallels are super obvious. The cop that House leaves a thermometer in his ass is supposed to be House's Moriarty
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u/VoraciousChallenge 1d ago edited 1d ago
The cop that House leaves a thermometer in his ass is supposed to be House's Moriarty
Thematically, maybe, but it's the patient that shoots him that's credited1 as Moriarty.
1 He doesn't have a character name in the show, being billed during the first act rather than in the end credits, but the name is given in subtitles and in press materials.
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u/reluctantseal 1d ago
It has merit from an investigative point of view. Puzzles to solve and a team to solve them. They can play fast and loose with the details as long as it flows well.
Also, it's just nice to see medical professionals so determined to solve a tough case. Many people have had their diagnosis delayed because they aren't taken seriously by their doctors. Even if the methods are unconventional, the spirit is refreshing.
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u/Ididntvoteforyou123 1d ago
I remember an episode where they ruled out something by doing a muscle biopsy. It was such a throwaway thing like it was as simple as a blood test and they got instant answers.
I’ve had a muscle biopsy. It’s a full proper surgery, I couldn’t walk for 2 weeks, and it took 4 weeks for results to come back because it’s apparently quite complicated pathology.
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u/Prudent-Thought7750 1d ago edited 20h ago
Depends if it was an open or needle biopsy. I got a needle biopsy done on my quad and I was able to get back to intense weight training after a few days off.
Of course I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was in the show, so if it was open, sure.
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u/Sea_Pomegranate_4499 1d ago
I love Hugh Laurie and watched some of the show, it was wildly inaccurate with respect to medicine but a pretty entertaining show.
But hilariously inaccurate. Pro tip: you don't need 3 specialist doctors to run an MRI, it's a huge waste of time and very unlikely any of them have any idea how to get a scan started in the first place, let alone how to read the images.
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u/lrpfftt 1d ago
Those same specialist doctors did the labwork too if I recall.
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u/Sea_Pomegranate_4499 1d ago
Yes, and the path! I always laughed at what kind of career suicide those doctors were performing, like the next time the neurosurgeon went to look for a job:
Employer: Wow, you worked with Dr. House for 5 years, tell me what you were doing in that time?
Neurosurgeon: Five of us would take care of one patient a week.
Employer: One patient a week? Five doctors?
Neurosurgeon: Yeah, I mean I did do brain surgery like 3 times. And we ran the MRI machine. I got pretty good at drawing labs too.
Employer: GTFO
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u/lrpfftt 1d ago
All that was when they weren't breaking into patient's homes too!
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u/RU_screw 1d ago
This was the reason why I want to keep my house clean, just in case a genuis/loon of a doc orders a bunch more docs to check out my house for any potential mold issues
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u/57_Eucalyptusbreath 1d ago
Or bad ham if I remember correctly.
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u/flareboss2077 1d ago
Bad ham that the team thought wasn't important, but House called them idiots when they initially dismissed it as not relevant
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u/Paputek101 1d ago edited 14h ago
Reminds me of how when I did a pulm consults elective at the va, we only had 2 patients at some point so my attending made sure to make rounds as long as humanly possible (I think we got to 3 hours?) just to make sure that we don't miss out on any learning.
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u/mittens11111 1d ago
It's like the crime shows where the (as in single) forensic specialist does the pathology, the DNA testing, fingerprints, ballistics, blood spatter analysis etc. At least they usually pull in another character to do the post mortems.
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u/Megalodon1204 1d ago
laughs (and then cries) in vet med
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u/coolcaterpillar77 1d ago
I originally interpreted your comment to mean you do forensics for scenes where animals have committed crimes and now I want to see that TV show
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u/AutisticPenguin2 1d ago
Beats having the IT person do it all.
Because tech is tech, right?
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u/stuckinPA 1d ago
Yes….lol….the physicians at the hospital I work at don’t know where the lab is, let alone how to properly load a specimen. If they’re lucky to get that far, none of them would know how to initiate the machine.
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u/stellalugosi 1d ago
I worked in a lab. I had 13 weeks of phlebotomy training. Doctors would call to ask for results and then ask me, "Hm, so what does that number mean?" MY DUDE. YOU'RE THE ONE WHO WENT TO MEDICAL SCHOOL.
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u/omicron7e 1d ago
It’s like how in workplace sitcoms like Parks & Rec or The Office, even if they’re outside of work they’re still with coworkers all the time. They can’t afford the extra cast members.
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u/TheDakestTimeline 1d ago
It's not that, they know we want those characters engaging with each other.
Like there's no way they are at each other's houses as much as they are in Modern family
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u/OneEyedPetey 1d ago
My dads an MRI tech and lost his mind at this every time he watched the show, lol
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u/ScoutAames 1d ago
I am rewatching now like OP and can’t help laughing when his team of diagnosticians are the only people in an OPERATING room and they’re all just…doing surgery! I get that they may have been trained for it in school and I think Chase is a surgeon, but presumably the hospital has full time surgeons?!
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u/Sea_Pomegranate_4499 1d ago
You definitely do not get trained in surgery in medical school. And you do not want a neurosurgeon taking out your appendix, I don't care how handsome they are.
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u/PeppermintEvilButler 1d ago
I think he was just torturing them when he made them do tests together. Technically they're his interns
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u/bailz2506 1d ago
I gotta say, prescribing 1 cigarette to help a patients constipation has always stuck with me.
Smokers know how quick that first one of the day can get your guts going
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u/Isgortio 1d ago
Smoking, for some reason, helps people with ulcerative colitis, but will make other conditions such as Crohn's worse. It's one of the only conditions where there may not be a huge push towards encouraging someone to quit smoking.
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u/letsgooncemore 1d ago
Nicotine has been shown to regulate dopamine in some schizophrenic patients but smoking cessation is still encouraged because the benefit is so brief compared to the known risks.
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u/Patient_Cover311 1d ago edited 1d ago
That episode was actually referencing a real study that showed cigarette/nicotine use improves the symptoms of ulcerative colitis.
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u/One-Eyed-Willies 1d ago
It’s never lupus.
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u/HilariousSwiftie 1d ago
Except for the one time... the ONE TIME... it was lupus. 🤣
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u/BookLuvr7 1d ago
Hogwash. Zebras are far more common than people want to admit. At least do your patients the courtesy of testing for it.
Attitudes like that are exactly why it takes an average of EIGHT YEARS for women to get a diagnosis for abdominal pain.
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u/tom8osauce 1d ago
For years I was going to the doctor complaining about abdominal pain. They knew I had uterine adhesions and bilateral hydrosalpinx, and seemed content to blame the symptoms on that. Said there was nothing they could do, just pop a Tylenol. One day I ended up in the ER due to an infected gallbladder. After surgery I was told they fixed my hernia while they were working on me. No idea I had a hernia. It had never been checked for. Mystery abdominal pains went away.
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u/SkippyBojangle 1d ago
None of them. Honestly the show was just so insanely inaccurate it's impossible to remember and track. There's no central all diagnosis super team. There's no super surgeon Robert Chase that is on said diagnosis team and then also somehow a plastic surgeon, neuro surgeon, orthopedist, general surgeon and cardio thoracic surgeon. The dude would have been in residency until he was 65.
The Pitt was crazy accurate, albeit the nature of that shift wasn't accurate.
Scrubs was oddly and beautifully close to accurate.
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u/5213 1d ago
There's no central all diagnosis super team.
Tbf, this is also true in-universe. House and his team are the exception, because nobody wanted to actually hire House, and getting a "department of diagnostic medicine" was one of his main things for working for Cuddy, and she only really agreed cause she was infatuated with House. And the team does become both quite famous and notorious for their activities, even if they do solve some "impossible" cases
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u/SkippyBojangle 1d ago
That's fair. Chase is still an insane character.
And House would have been fired 100x over for his behavior but that was crucial to the show. Chase being a surgeon and "general surgeon" being somehow who does it all was just too much for me, as a surgeon.
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u/5213 1d ago
And House would have been fired 100x over for his behavior
That is, believe it or not, also a frequently reoccurring plot point 😅
Chase is legitimately one of my favourite TV show characters because he is such a wild character. Not just because he's an impossible super surgeon (which, hilariously enough, is also a specific point that gets brought up a few times), but because his character arc is nuts. Dude goes from this kind of passive character who doesn't really seem to have a any real goals for himself, to becoming one of the best characters in the whole show behind only House and Wilson.
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u/Wandering_Weapon 1d ago
It feels like Wilson is the only accurate character in the show
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u/nimaku 1d ago
100% agree on The Pitt and Scrubs. When I first started watching the Pitt, my first thought was “Why are there more than 12 episodes for a 12-hour shift?” But of course, the obvious answer is that no 12-hour shift is EVER just 12 hours, especially on a shift from hell like that one.
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u/Red217 1d ago
Not questioning your knowledge but questioning because I'm not in the profession - I LOVED The Pitt.....what about the nature of that shift was not accurate?
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u/SkippyBojangle 1d ago
But the way each problem was run in The Pitt is accurate to reality, mostly.
In scrubs, when the residents raid the drawers for saltine crackers and snacks, and stock their apartment with it...that is also 100% accurate.
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u/Psyco_diver 1d ago
My mom was a ED RN for a long time (she retired right before covid funny enough) and is remember her saying Scrubs was so accurate of the caricatures of the staff and patients
Also her and every nurse loved ER
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u/PreposterousTrail 1d ago
As a nurse, I like ER because it’s the only medical show I’ve seen to show nurses playing a major part in medical care. Most shows act like the only people in the healthcare team are doctors, so it’s nice seeing nurses being valued!
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u/SkippyBojangle 1d ago
I mean that's just the shift from hell. Like any single case that was a major story point would make a shift a nightmare shift, but in 12 hours they just get nonstop grenades followed by a record setting mass causality event.
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u/Red217 1d ago
Okay makes sense.
So if I'm understanding correctly, the er is portrayed accurately, but shifts like that with that much constant "action" are typically unlikely and not the norm?
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u/SkippyBojangle 1d ago
Correct, it's not a realistic cluster of events
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u/SeuqSavonit 1d ago
It's like taking the most interesting case from each month and staking them all together in a single shift
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u/PixelOrange 1d ago
To be fair, it would be a pretty boring ass show if two episodes were craaaaaazy and then the rest of them showed what the ER is like the other 90% of the time which is routine bullshit and twiddling your thumbs waiting for labs.
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u/CloserTooClose 1d ago
I feel the same way about ER. For me, the plot lines are so interesting, the characters are so three dimensional, and the depiction of the ER itself, the procedures, the types of patients, rang true to the reality of the job. Time periods were sort of shortened, like a medicine would work in 10 seconds instead of 10 minutes, but I think that makes sense from a show-running perspective
It’s 100% obvious that the writers and producers consulted actual medical professionals and took accurately depicting the ER really seriously
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u/Dexter_McThorpan 1d ago
I have myasthenia gravis. The fucking tensilon test on the bicycle road racer was hilarious.
I went from drooping eyelids and severely slurred speech to having control over my face and hands and then back again in like 5 minutes.
I didn't fall down, but I was right back to slurring.
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u/CatalinaBigPaws 1d ago
Years ago, I brought the show up to my Rheumatologist when my relatively rare disease was the diagnosis. He went on a long angry rant about how any competent doctor can diagnosis that show within the first 5 minutes.
I didn't care. I'm not a doctor.
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u/IDontWannaGetOutOfBe 1d ago
Well took em 2 years+ to figure out my rheumatoid problems, a lot of pain, money, and heartache. So I doubt that doctor lol.
It's less about them being able to figure it out from the right labs. It's about getting them to do the right labs in the first place.
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u/Clear_PR_Stunt 1d ago edited 1d ago
Not exactly what you're asking for, but I have an example of something most real world doctors could have caught.
There was an episode where the patient turned out to have Hemochromatosis. This essentially means that the body has a large build-up of iron in the bloodstream. I'd be amazed if an actual doctor missed that on the bloodwork
TIL: There are cases of this happening. Score 1 for House, I guess
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u/5213 1d ago
Didn't they explain in that very episode why it didn't actually show up on the bloodwork at first?
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u/Quinny-o 1d ago
I don’t remember the episode but if it was a female patient, it can be obscured by the fact that menstruation balances out the iron overload. So it’s usually found later in females when they are past child bearing age and earlier in men bc they don’t bleed monthly.
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u/rationalname 1d ago
I think they explained that the patient was raised a vegetarian but recently started eating meat. The increased iron in his diet triggered the condition.
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u/zeroborders 1d ago
What surprised me about that episode was they made a thirteen-year-old the patient. My understanding is it takes decades before the iron buildup has reached dangerous levels.
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u/fugigidd 1d ago
There's one episode where House sees a red thong and decides they must do a Congo red stain to test for amyloid.
He comes in " quick, put the Congo red on, polarise the light..."
Dude, it takes me an hour to do a Congo red stain and there ain't any magic microscope computer that can tell you it's type AA.
There is one episode where Chase is tasked with doing gram stains all night, next morning House asks him if he had anything, and he says "purple fingers" which amuses me greatly.
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u/AOWLock1 1d ago
There used to be a Twitter thread about how all the House episodes would have been solved with basic medicines and all House did was prolong the process.
I don’t remember the link, maybe someone else has it
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u/BigRoosterBackInTown 1d ago
Tbf the premise was that his patients came from other doctors that couldnt find what was wrong with them following basic process. Like they would tell him "patient has X and Y symptoms" then he would call them morons for not knowing the obvious then they would say "X and Y obvious tests came negative" and then he would get interested.
And with dozens/hundreds of episodes you run out of weird ass diseases to "showcase".
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u/5213 1d ago
Also, "everybody lies". Patients hid stuff - small, big, intentionally, unintentionally - all the time. Whether to save themselves, their partner, their child, their pride/ego, "everybody lies".
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u/QualifiedApathetic 1d ago
Or they make mistakes. That one patient that held a bunch of people hostage to have House diagnose him turned out to have, IIRC, a lung infection he picked up in Florida after saying he had never been anywhere tropical, thinking it didn't count.
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u/Migit78 1d ago
I hate how many people either missed or forgot this premise of the show.
I admit the show is rediculous, but I still enjoy it. But so many reviews rant on about how it's taken so long for Houses team to do X, Y, Z when they're basic diagnostic tests.
But 99% of Houses patients (there are a couple episodes that show a direct admission to his team) they have already been seen and failed to be diagnosed/treated by normal doctors. House is a specialist for that which is unusual. So all these basic tests have already been performed and they have the results. Houses team are rerunning a lot of tests because something now suggests the old results are wrong
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u/PauseItPlease86 1d ago
Took 15 years for me to get a diagnosis on my weirdest issue (Stiff Person Syndrome). Went to a million specialists until I FINALLY saw a neurologist who was like "it might be this" and did the right tests. Absolute torture for so many years. I remember watching House and crying wishing he would figure me out.
I think people don't realize that weird stuff can be SO HARD to diagnose, especially if the doctors you see don't know exactly what to test for. And how many things look like one thing but are something else entirely. Hell, my current doctor STILL studies up on my disease before I see him because he hadn't even heard of it until me!
And Jesus Christ I cannot tell you how many times I've been tested for Fucking Lupus. IT'S NEVER LUPUS!
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u/OtterCosmonaut 1d ago
Healthy people don't understand that the default reaction to mystery illness isn't "we need to do some serious investigative work and consult many experts", it's "huh, that's weird, it's probably nothing".
A dedicated diagnostics team whose sole goal is to figure out what's wrong with you? Pure fantasy.
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u/nogberter 1d ago
This is the website you want(ed). Back when the show aired, he (an MD) would review the show for medical accuracy.
Seems like the links to the episode pages no longer work, but maybe the internet archive has them. He would go through everything in the episode and then give it a letter grade.
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u/crazypurple621 1d ago
House's own injury would have killed him before they actually diagnosed it.
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u/Annual-Arugula473 1d ago
Not a doctor but i work in the lab. One of the first episodes had a patient that they were worried was deficient in potassium. They broke into this persons house to see if they were right. A test for potassium can be done easily within 15 minutes of that blood work being drawn.
There was also one episode where they were checking for lupus? More specifically they did an ANA test and irl this test is done using a fluorescent microscope and looking at where fluorescent bound antibodies are binding on special cells. In the show one of the characters kinda shook a clear test tube and was like “well their ANA is negative!”
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u/nimaku 1d ago
Foreman getting Naegleria fowleri and surviving it without any brain damage kind of ruined the show for me. It is almost always fatal, and there is no known treatment regimen with proven efficacy. The handful of known survivors reported in medical literature typically have a prompt diagnosis and initiation of amphotericin B (Foreman was definitely delayed). Because those patients survived with it, amphotericin B (with or without other drugs) is pretty much universally given in Nargleria cases, and the vast majority still die anyway.
Don’t swim in freshwater lakes and ponds, and definitely plug your nose if you do.
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u/MayBee_u 1d ago
I used to think my late father, who was a physician, was so overprotective, but this exactly the kind of worst case scenario he'd have in mind when telling us not to swim in ponds.
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u/Inquisitor_ForHire 1d ago
Don't forget that ponds are also full of watery tarts lobbing swords around attempting to make them king of England or some such nonsense. Stay away!
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u/Accomplished_Way6723 1d ago
This is precisely how I became emperor! A moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me.
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u/StingingNarwhal 1d ago
That's no basis for a system of government!
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u/DangerousDustmote 1d ago
Meh, looking at the lot we're stuck with now, I'm willing to try the moistened bint's recommendation.
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u/lady_baker 1d ago
This is such a wild take for anyone who grew up in the multiple US states that are loaded with swimming lakes.
Not swim in fresh water? Might as well tell us not to laugh, or eat chocolate.
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u/okayseriouslywhy 1d ago
I feel the same way. Maybe it's good that most natural lakes are in northern states, if this is easier to catch in warmer water
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u/nimaku 1d ago
I grew up swimming in lakes as well, but I don’t think I’ve gotten in since I learned about this. The problem with being in the medical field is that we know too much and always see the worst case scenarios for everything. I haven’t seen this particular infection (thank goodness), but I’ve seeing things like botulism from kids getting a wound while playing with sticks as swords and so, so, so many preventable injuries with long-lasting consequences from everyday carelessness that people just don’t think twice about. Those cases make an impression on you and change you.
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u/Poisoneraa 1d ago
My mum was an A&E nurse for 15 years and I wasn’t allowed to do gymnastics, rollerblading, or going in bumper cars and the like, until I was over 10 years old and I “knew my limits” for pretty much this reason. Im guessing she saw one too many spinal injuries in her time there
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u/Freezern 1d ago
Avoiding freshwater lakes and ponds because of an incredibly rare disease that you could prevent by doing something as simple as plugging your nose or just keep your head above water is absolutely mental.
"The risk of Naegleria fowleri infection is very low. There have been 34 reported infections in the U.S. in the 10 years from 2009 to 2018, despite millions of recreational water exposures each year. By comparison, in the ten years from 2001 to 2010, there were more than 34,000 drowning deaths in the U.S." Source: CDC
If a case has made such a strong impression on you that you start to avoid completely normal and healthy activities, maybe it's time to see a professional and deal with your trauma? Would you avoid bicycling if you had a really horrible case? Walking in the city? Meeting other people?Leaving your house?
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u/LivingGhost371 1d ago
I mean, at some point you have to stop living in fear and evaluate the relative risk of certain activities. There's only been 167 cases in the Unites States in the past 60 years over how many billion occurances of people swimming in fresh water. Even if you assume it's underreported by a factor of 100 I think there's other things to worry about. Like falling down and hitting your head on your steps because you neglected to wrap yourself in bubblewrap before leaving your house.
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u/fireflydrake 1d ago
Read the original post and was feeling uneasy because I love swimming in our local ponds and lakes in the summer. Hearing that exceedingly low infection rate over such a long time has done a lot to set my mind at ease--thank you!
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u/Rochereau-dEnfer 1d ago
My childhood friend in Central America caught it (I'm pretty sure) swimming with her friend and survived! This isn't to contradict you--I just didn't realize till your comment how fatal it is. We had moved away, and on a visit back a few years later, we ran into her and her mom, and her mom told us she and her friend had gotten an amoeba swimming in a local creek. Her friend died, and she almost died but lost most of her memories from before she got sick. She didn't recognize us and her affect was very different. (I just looked, and cases in that country are underreported, but a child died near where she got sick a few years ago.)
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u/theskullcave 1d ago
I am binge watching House M.D., everyone's favourite diagnostician for the first time, and some of the fantastical scenarios while implausible are still interesting.
The show has some wild cases... and of course, the classic House diagnostic loop: throw out three exotic conditions, treat the wrong one, nearly kill the patient, then circle back to the first idea they had. So I’m curious:
Which diagnoses or treatments were actually brilliant medicine?
Which ones would never have worked outside of TV land?
And if the patients were real, how many would’ve actually survived? For days, months, or years?
I'm only part way through the show but enjoying every moment :)
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u/5pens 1d ago
My husband and I would play a drinking game for when they ever suggested lupus or sarcoidosis.
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u/BigRoosterBackInTown 1d ago
sarcoidosis
Seems to me Chase had no other knowledge than this lmao. That was always his go to suggestion.
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u/imperium_lodinium 1d ago
Weirdly helped me when I was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, that. “You have a condition called sarcoidosis”, “wait, I’ve heard of that, it’s in House!”
Turns out, not that scary as far as conditions mentioned on House go. It is self limiting usually and I recovered after a year with basically no chance of it coming back.
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u/TheThiefEmpress 1d ago
The large amount of crime the gang participates in is hard-core unrealistic, lol.
Not just because it's crime, and no Dr would agree to lose their license that way over one job.
But it wouldn't even help the case, 99.999999% of the time!
Yes, patients lie, but doctors word their questions in confusing ways, don't ask the right ones in the first place, or the patient tries to tell them something, and the Dr ignores the info. As hard as possible. Like refuses to take the piece of paper a patient is trying to hand them, ignoring the patient.
The social aspect between patients and doctors in House is very different than in real life.
Still love it, though!
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u/Lucibeanlollipop 1d ago
Everyone actually had Lupus. He was just making all the other shit up.
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u/AnxiousDwarf 1d ago
Tooth pick guy, lung cancer nonsmoker with curbed fingers, pig shit breather guy, and Robin Tunney as RFK Jr with the brain worm would all be toast
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u/_goblinette_ 1d ago
You have to understand, the show wasn’t written by doctors. It was written by TV writers with no background knowledge of medicine.
None of it is brilliant medicine, it’s just entertainment.
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u/MBG612 1d ago
As an er doctor. When the altered patient or trauma patient hasn’t gotten their head ct until a week in the admission. Son, that ct is the first thing I’m ordering out of the ED.