READ EXCERPT: 'Medical Mysteries,' by Ann Reynolds and Kenneth Wapner
Read an excerpt on bizarre and deadly medical cases that baffle doctors.
Aug. 4, 2009— -- Did you know that some people are born with their internal organs backward? Or that a particular form of paralysis can be set off by eating pizza? From the files of ABC's "Primetime" show "Medical Mysteries" comes "Medical Mysteries: From the Bizarre to the Deadly ... The Cases That Have Baffled Doctors," by Ann Reynolds and Kenneth Wapner, a collection that examines real-life medical oddities that will shock and amaze you.
The collection puts readers in the examination room as doctors uncover and try to cure the most bizarre of conditions. From the musician who can hear everything inside his body -- even his eyeballs moving back and forth in their sockets -- to the woman who gets seasick -- on land -- this book is sure to take readers to the front lines of the medical fringe, where absolutely anything is possible.
Read an excerpt of the book below.
Introduction
Both my parents were physicians, and when I was little, most of the grown-ups I met had "Dr." in front of their names. I absorbed what seemed to be the obvious life lesson: when you grew up, you could be a doctor...or a patient. I knew which one to choose.
But somehow, in spite of being pre-med in college (yes, I even took Organic Chemistry), I ended up in television news. When ABC News decided to do a series on unusual medical conditions, it felt like redemption -- another chance to dip my toe into medicine.
Remember the commercial that said, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV"? That was the intriguing proposition that faced our producing team: without having to get medical degrees, we could try to understand some of the field's greatest puzzles. We could find people with unusual, extraordinary, bewildering medical conditions and tell their stories. And I was that most dangerous of creatures: a civilian with ten cents' worth of medical knowledge, mostly gleaned from my parents' dinner table conversations.
My mother was an anesthesiologist, so her hospital day was done before my father's (internal medicine, specializing in liver disease). Dad would come home from the hospital as we set the table, take off his white medical coat and stethoscope, and we'd sit down to dinner. After a bit of family conversation, the daily game of "What's That Diagnosis?" would begin.
"We had a woman, sixty-three, admitted today with diffuse abdominal pain and delusions," Dad would offer. "Something infectious, I think," my mom would reply, tossing the salad. "Any foreign travel? Did you test for parasites?"
They would bounce possible diagnoses back and forth, my mother always saying, "It's bound to be something more ordinary than that!" My father always held out for the rarer, more interesting condition.
My brother and I ate and occasionally contributed questions. (It's now very, very difficult to gross me out while I eat -- I've heard it all.)
The process of narrowing down -- taking the tiny clues from the patient's symptoms, genetics, the test results and scans, and finding out what was wrong and how to fix it -- was something of a family sport. With the ABC News Medical Mysteries series, I got the chance to revisit the dinner table of my childhood and peek, once again, into the way doctors think and diseases work.
The show struck a chord with television audiences, I think, because we all live in bodies -- we're all wondering if that little ache or that strange sound in our neck could "be something." Perhaps, if you're not in the medical field, some of the syndromes and conditions in this book will seem, well, impossible. Who would guess there could be seizures set off by music alone? Who would think that people who seem completely normal, who have entirely normal vision, might be simply unable to "see" human faces? Did you know that some people are born with their internal organs backwards inside them? Or that a particular form of paralysis strikes only first-time surfers? And another can be set off by eating a pizza? And what kind of medical problem would make a man look as though he was turning into a tree, with "roots" and "bark"?
We're the ones who got to find out and tell you about these incredible things. But as fascinated as we all were by the exotic conditions and inventive medical treatments, the more stories we looked into, the more we realized: these stories were powerful because they happened to people. Normal, ordinary people who live through symptoms they've never expected -- and normal, ordinary doctors who painstakingly unravel diseases and struggle to give their patients relief and, perhaps, even cure them.
All the patients and doctors involved in Medical Mysteries were kind enough to let us into their worlds and take us on their journeys. Most of them did it so that people out there with the same set of problems will know that there's a diagnosis and, of-ten, treatment available to them. It was a privilege to put their experiences in front of the public.As you read through the book, as you picture all the scans, all the tests, all the questions, all the symptoms -- you may end up like our team at ABC News did: just flat-out amazed. With billions of cells and processes and checks and balances inside our bodies --systems we ignore as we read the paper and go to work and drop the kids off at a playdate -- be amazed that it doesn't go wrong more often. Be amazed at how lucky most of are every day -- every healthy day.
-- Ann Reynolds
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