The medications the man had received initially, Leis said, could have killed him
''I thought, `This is extremely unusual - this can't be,''' Leis said. ''How can a virus, in this case West Nile, change its clinical properties to such a marked degree? It had typically not presented this way.''
This information should be disseminated to anyone you know living in a WNV area. You'll notice the guy thinks it "can't be" because it hasn't "typically" presented "this way."
Trust me on this one, if we've got to rely on neurologists to diagnose this, we could be in big trouble. Doctors are going to have to think "outside the box" in order to diagnose this.
Ask anybody with MS about the diagnosis process and you'll know that neurologists can be "fence sitters" when it comes to making a diagnosis.
Should be interesting to watch this develop.
I'm worried about this. I have taken my 85 year old mother to the doctor twice already with muscle and joint pain, she was prescribed Vioxx the first time and had a bad reaction to it. (Same happened with my 74 year old aunt). She has been prescribed Lodine on the second visit. I have been experiencing unusual joint pain myself. I don't like this one bit.
Fox News reported once yesterday that there were six people in Mississippi who were paralyzed from WNV. (Something is going on)
In defense of the docs, you spend all day long dealing with "horses" so I wouldn't be too hard on them when they don't immediately notice the "zebras" that show up very rarely. The body of knowledge within even a sub-specialty is so great that no one single human being can have cognitive access to it at a single moment. Sometimes a take a while and a bit of work to show alternatives as rational a differential diagnosis.