A normal medical consultation day.
Hello my dear readers, the greatest passion of my life is my passion for my ultrasound imaging studies. I always found the idea of scanning a patient without having to make an incision in their abdomen to determine what is causing pain or discomfort fascinating.
We call these types of characteristics, in medical terms, signs and symptoms. The signs are the characteristics that we doctors can see or feel using our senses and the symptoms are all those manifestations that we can collect from the interrogation of what the patient is suffering. Remember that the patient must be directed in their answers to adequately detect what their diagnosis is.
Once we have a clinical or medical diagnosis, we can proceed to the patient's examination. But it so happens that we physicians perform ultrasound studies on patients when the patient has already come with a medical indication as to what his attending physician needs and, in that case, as we perform the non-invasive evaluation, we question the patient. With the interrogation while we examine, we have a good percentage of accurate diagnosis of their pathology.
Today I was examining two elderly patients and neither of them had ever had an ultrasound examination, so I was the first to diagnose their ailments. I will tell you a little about each individual patient.
My first patient was a 75-year-old lady, very low in spirits, who was asked to be evaluated for dizziness.
There is a protocol for ultrasound evaluation that has nothing to do with other medical examinations, so my examination was methodical and when I look at the lady's gallbladder, the gland is full of stones. It is what we call vesicular lithiasis, her gallbladder is full of gallstones.
I can't imagine for sure how many years the lady has been suffering from the symptoms that cause gallbladder lithiasis but I assure you that the pains that occur from her alteration are not at all pleasant.
I can't imagine how this lady has been suffering for so many years and not knowing the reason for what is happening to her body. People sometimes get used to the discomfort and don't go to the doctor and then it turns out that the problems lie in physical diagnoses easily visualized with ultrasound.
The other patient I examined is an older, 62-year-old gentleman who has never had an ultrasound study, and guess what, he also had his own surprise. His prostate gland is enlarged and in need of treatment to deflate. Plus, he told me about an infection that he reported on the lab test.
Yes, I could see that the gland was projecting over the bladder and disfiguring it and that is a characteristic of the enlargement of the prostate gland and it also has a lump.
So, I draw the conclusion not only from the fact that I have seen these two patients today but from the thousands that have come through my office with the same story that they have never had a study done. That my dear friends doesn't mean that we are healthy, on the contrary, the only thing that is clear when we feel well and we have never had a study of our abdomen and pelvis is that we don't know how we are inside, that is the only sure thing.
There have been many family tragedies in which one of the family members has been in the street doing something he/she normally does and has fallen face first to the ground. In the best of cases, it has only been something treatable with medication, but in the worst of cases the person has died simply by not knowing anything about their body. Never a visit to the doctor, never a blood test, never a non-invasive test.
We must take responsibility for our body, go to the family doctor or general practitioner. Refer our repeated and undiagnosed symptoms, girls after being sexually active even if they have no symptoms of anything should go for evaluation with the gynecologist and guys should not try and medicate themselves with the neighbor's or friend's treatments but should go to their trusted physician for guidance on the best evaluation to be done.
Gentlemen after the age of 40 should go to the urologist to have their prostate checked.
Don't expect surprises that are more difficult to treat. It is not that they are incurable but they are more difficult to cope with.
Thank you as always for your support and you’re reading. Thanks also to all the sponsors and to those who have renewed me as is the case of my friend @Olasquare
I used to go to the doctor quite often thanks to the help of my parents, but lately I have not been going, it has been very expensive for me. The last time I went was to have my vocal cords checked, since my voice has always been hoarse, but this prevents me from singing well, according to the ENT my vocal cords did not develop enough which causes my difficulty in speaking or singing, the treatment is to do speech therapy but it is expensive. But I have tried to go to the doctor every time I can, because it is important as you say, to know what is going on in our body.
With the ultrasound scans you reminded me that when I was 15 years old I had a hernia and I had my first ultrasound scan, it was a hernia in the abdomen, a horrible experience because that did not allow me to play in the orchestra, the pain was immense, so I had to have surgery and be a long time of rest without any orchestra for a long time, to prevent the wound reopened, a little chilling experience for me.
I really admire people who study medicine and dedicate their lives to it, I have a cousin who recently graduated as a doctor and I am very happy for him, because it is a really important career, but it is something I would not do, I really admire people who dedicate themselves to it, I do not like going to hospitals or having my blood drawn, nothing like that, but I do it because I know it is necessary to know how I am doing.