PLSO The Oregon Surveyor Sept/Oct 2019

2 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 42, No. 5 From the Editor Greg Crites, PLS Editor MESSAGE EDITOR FROM THE I believe the parallels between the medical profession (not to mention others) and ours are striking. Our profession is better served when we are willing to share information. I used to subscribe to The New Yorker magazine when my mother was still alive, but sadly, due to her passing, my retirement and realignment of my priorities, I let the subscription lapse (it certainly didn’t help that it was hard to get their subscription department to un- derstand the word NO even after several attempts). One of my favorite articles appearing peri- odically in that magazine was one entitled “Annals of Medicine” (I’m not sure wheth- er that’s still the case as I haven’t been in a doctor’s office lately that keeps waiting room copies around for patient scrutiny). These stories held to a theme relating to the complexity of finding a diagnosis for an extremely rare ailment, and, due to my years working as an emergency medi- cal technician, always piqued my interest. Some of them offered wondrous, even al- most serendipitous treatment solutions to ailments encountered by medical pro- fessionals who stumbled around trying to put a name to an illness that simply wasn’t on the list of maladies common to our species. Bear in mind that most, if not all these stories, appeared before the Internet and web-based platforms like WebMD. I remember one particular article was based upon the discovery of a malady whose symptoms appeared in a female patient with a particularly rare allergic re- action to copper (a sensitivity to the tune of about three parts per million), intro- duced, unknowingly by an OBGYN (that’s a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology) who had prescribed the insertion of an IUD (intra-uterine device) as a common- ly accepted means of birth control. The IUD used trace amounts of copper as part of its ingredients. This would have been perfectly accepted medical practice had it not been for the fact that this par- ticular patient had a sensitivity to copper that was “off the charts.” Someone got the bright idea that the symptoms mani- fested by this particular female may have been caused by an allergic reaction, and, voila’, that proved to be the answer! Once the IUD was removed, the symptoms disappeared! Just the other night, my wife introduced me to a Netflix series produced by The New York Times entitled “Diagnosis.” This program follows along onmuch the same idea as “Annals of Medicine” except that it (with patient permissions of course) puts the patient’s name, symptoms and other pertinent information out on the “Web” and solicits replies, via the Internet from the medical community and oth- ers who may have had experience with the symptoms described in the patient bio. The program is spearheaded by Dr. Lisa Sanders, an associate professor at the Yale University School of Medicine. The choice of who to accept as a client for this program is driven by a multi- faceted list of criteria (at least): • The rarity of the condition • The absence of a definitive diag- nosis (particularly after the patient has cycled through several medical professionals without a satisfactory diagnosis and of course, alleviation of symptoms) • The ability/inability of the patient to pay their medical bills (which are typically enormous) • The lack of ability to share collective information about the patient’s medical profile (think HIPAA) to see if other medical personnel or mental health professionals know something about the presentation of the illness and any successes/ failures experienced through attempted treatments