Posted on 07/07/2024 3:42:41 AM PDT by dennisw
After this morning’s article about the repeated visits by a Parkinson’s disease specialist to the White House resident medical clinic since last summer, a physician emailed me to argue that the specifics of Biden’s diagnosis matter less than the fact his symptoms are now so visible.
He consented to have his email published, on the condition he not be named. This is edited only for length and minor copy-editing fixes:
All the disturbing symptoms we all see are called Parkinsonism. That is simply a fact. They consist of motor slowing, festinating gait with reduced arm swing, mask like ‘facies’, reduced vocal volume.
In fact in medical school we watch videos of patients with Parkinsonism like Biden to illustrate to the students how this manifests.
The only question is what’s causing it. The best case scenario for him would be that this is in fact, Parkinson’s disease. There’s a lot of treatment and the cognitive effects can be variable and sometimes not that significant.
Worst case would be Lewy body dementia. This can be rapidly progressive, and the diagnosis is usually only made postmortem or based on the rapid decline.
Other possibilities include Alzheimer’s disease, though that is less likely to have Parkinsonism. And then finally vascular dementia, which definitely can present like this, and the course can be variable, sometimes plateauing for long periods of time. There are other very obscure causes of Parkinsonism that certainly could be a possibility, but much much less likely.
So the question isn’t does he have Parkinsonism; that is something that is simply observable, the question remains and the only question is what is causing this, and whether there’s likely to be significant, and or rapid decline, particularly in cognition.
The scandal is that they are hiding all this and that we are not having a public discussion about it. I did notice that [CNN chief medical correspondent Dr.] Sanjay Gupta was beginning to tiptoe into this conversation.
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One last thing to keep in mind. He did have some sort of neurosurgery for “aneurysm, bleed“ and people with those sorts of bleeds to have a higher incidence of neurocognitive decline as they age.
Just so you don’t get any criticism, there is one last possible explanation for his Parkinsonism and that would be a medication side effect. But if that were true, they would tell us what the medicine was by now, and it does not explain the confusion and some of the cognitive changes.
Medication-induced Parkinsonian features is a common thing as well though typically without mental status changes and in my experience without all the vocal changes that we see with him…
Another issue is that medication for Parkinson is can have protean effects on mental status. Sometimes bizarre things such as compulsive gambling. None of these changes would you want manifesting in someone in the Oval Office.
Finally, people become very critical whenever you use diagnostic terms, so it is always important to couch. Any conversation about diagnosis is merely reviewing what is called the differential diagnosis list for people with these symptoms. This is something we teach every medical student.
So it is not rendering a diagnosis. It is merely reviewing the common causes of these symptoms. And [I] always point out the diagnosis itself requires actually evaluat[ing] the patient with the list I’ve given you.
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Kyrie eleison.
That sounds exactly like what Dr Drew said on his podcast with adam carolla this week.exactly
BTTT
funny, I was thinking the same thing the other day.
Parkinson’s disease combined with libtardism can be an awful combination
The question is, who’s in charge, if Joe’s a vegetable. The staff is jammed with Obama people.
For those of us - Doctors - who paid attention FOUR YEARS AGO, we already KNEW Joe Biden had SOME kind of cognitive disorder, likely dementia of some variety whether Parkinson’s-related, related to his TWO brain surgeries or garden-variety.
It was as obvious as day and night given his “stuttering’ (how the waste stream media portrayed his “gaffs,” which most lay people - and doctors - laughed off as merely Joe’s incompetence and stupidity at worst.
We’ve been told from leftist totalitarian apologists time and time again NOT to make “remote diagnoses” while THEIR Pschiatrists, Psychologists and similar “experts” write Op-Ed pieces, books, go on daytime and Sunday morning talk shows to spout their assessments of POTUS Trump’s various and several DSM listed mental disorders for years on end.
But Family Practitioners (with a bent towards men’s health and geriatrics given my miliitary/civil service patient population) remained voices crying in the wilderness forced to wear hair shirts and eat ze locusts and honey.
Nobody would listen.
Now this arrogant a$$wipe CNN tool Sanjay Gupta who couldn’t diagnose his way out of a tissue sample bag says - NOW he says - Biden should agree to cognitive testing.
Where was Sanjay 4 years ago? Shilling for the Chicom/Dementiacrat-run CNN not wanting to bite the hand that fed him.
FRAK those guys.
Sanjay Gupta...... what a careerist Toad. Same goes for most of the imported foreigner TV and liberal media Docs. They lie and obfuscate for fame n fortune.
Such as this stupid injection crazed clown
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/leana-s-wen/
I’m no MD, but anyone could see how Biden’s handlers hid and controlled him throughout the campaign four years ago.
Of course, as a serial-plagiarist from a thug family who barely graduated from a mediocre law school decades ago, he was always prone to nasty and volatile moods and never had much cognitive reserve to start with.
I posted this the other day. I believe in the latter stages, no matter what dx (Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, vascular, Lewy Body), it seems the dementia symptoms, behaviors, and progression are all very similar. My FiL had vascular dementia for 10 years, but in his last year, his behaviors looked exactly like Biden now. Even in 2020 I could see similarities.
I was on a forum with others dealing with dementia and near the end, the early diagnosis didn’t matter so much because the dementia stage seems to follow the same pattern.
This stage the decline happens very fast, and even faster if he has an illness, has to be hospitalized or has to have surgery for any reason
Just my observations
The full range of Biden’s symptoms suggest a form of dementia instead of simple Parkinson’s Disease. Biden seems to be in the middle stages and could experience a rapid decline.
Your post is spot on. Any second year medical student (ok maybe not a surgical resident) who was watching Biden even before the 2020 election knew he was suffering from some form of cognitive disorder which was likely to be progressive. It amazes me that the level of obfuscation has been so successful as the “third estate” has long been democrat sycophants. The celebrity docs who I suspect spend more time in makeup rather than white coats have been willing accomplices in the deception. Now during this “I’m shocked that there is gambling going on here” moment they fane surprise. If there was malpractice for misleading the populace by these “physician’s” misdiagnosis the awards should be substantial.
Did Joe have a deep brain implant to control the tremors? Does he freeze up (become rigid) at night?
Parkinsons Disease is associated with dementia in at least 40 to 60% of cases.
“He did have some sort of neurosurgery for “aneurysm, bleed“ “
Actually he had that surgery twice.
CC
It’s a terrible waste to waste a mind..
Late onset Parkinson’s tends to present with dementia more than early onset.
If it was Lewy Body he wouldn’t be able to read the teleprompter at this point or know who anybody but Jill was. He’d be calling a dog a cat. The short term memory loss would be so bad he would be asking the same thing over and over every couple of minutes. My BIL has Lewy Body late stage and I’ve been observing it for about 9 years now on a regular basis.
Its likely Parkinson’s combined with some kind of dementia. In any case he has no business near the presidency.
I know what you mean about Lewy Body Dementia. My grandmother had it, and in the middle stages, she would have spells when she thought she was in Dublin as a girl watching the Easter Rebellion and the burning of the General Post Office.
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