Science class leads to self-diagnosis
I never got as much out of AP science class as this girl did.
For eight years, Jessica Terry suffered from stomach pain so horrible, it brought her to her knees. The pain, along with diarrhea, vomiting and fever, made her so sick, she lost weight and often had to miss school.
During a science class, Jessica Terry, 18, discovered a tell-tale granuloma in her own pathology slide.
Her doctors, no matter how hard they tried, couldnt figure out the cause of Jessicas abdominal distress.
Then one day in January, Terry, 18, figured it out on her own.
In her Advanced Placement high school science class, she was looking under the microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue — slides her pathologist had said were completely normal — and spotted an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, a clear indication that she had Crohns disease.
via Teen diagnoses her own disease in science class – CNN.com.
Kudos to her for her keen eye.
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Very interesting, but not surprising at all. As an IBD sufferer it took a long time before me, my GI, and surgeon all agreed that my primary condition is Crohns (I display symptoms of both Crohns and UC, from my own research I’ve learned that about 20% of IBD patients display symptoms of both diseases). Labs are often useless, I test positive for some Crohns’ markers, negative on others. I suspect had I not gone on to develop fistulas we might still be looking for a diagnosis.
So true. These diseases often go under- or misdiagnosed for years. She was lucky that she discovered it early. And I’m happy your team ultimately came to the right diagnosis.
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