Saturday, April 11, 2015

At Nineteen I Am One Of The Best (If Not The Only) "Theoretical Oncologists" In The World

Uncontested, of course.

I might have mentioned before in a post or two that the idea that I wanted to maybe consider going to med school died long ago when I realized while taking my Healthcare class in high school that I wouldn't last a day in the real world of medicine, but yet I'm still fascinated despite actually having almost hypocritical views on medicine when I am the patient in question.

So after binging on Grey's and House (twice) I came up with a perfect medical subspecialty for myself: theoretical medicine. It's based solely on information you look up and your own logic; so all the cool cases you want without the pressure of needing to diagnose/treat a patient correctly or face killing someone because you didn't get the answer. And plus, Netflix teaches you a good bit about what you might encounter.

In mid March, my Grandmere (my mom's mom) was diagnosed with lymphoma, but at the time of the diagnosis that's all her cancer hospital knew. I became interested and I wanted to put my theoretical oncology skills to the test. After all, I watched Robert Sean Leonard play a sweet and cute oncologist on TV so therefore I could be a theoretical oncologist with Google on her side right?

Yep!

So when my Grandmere went to her cancer hospital and had her tests done I already had my primary diagnosis of Stage I Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma locked in. I figured it out using a combo of Google, a little bit of a medical history I got from conversations with my mom on the phone, and pure Gregory House-style logic.

Here's how I figured it out:

Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (NHL) is the most common type of lymphoma in people who are diagnosed with a lymphoma. The cancer has very distinct symptoms and if you go in early they can take out a lymph node and biopsy it to see what's messing it up. Knowing that's what they did for my Grander, it seemed like they had caught it early so the likelihood of metastasis (spreading) of the cancer at this early was slim.

When her tests came back, she let me know the cancer was Stage I NHL proving my diagnosis and also proving I had a future in theoretical Oncology.

Well, that's my story. Hope you got a laugh out of it or were enlightened.

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