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The wilderness of the medically unexplained

 •  • by Paul Ingraham
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Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

Reserve a few minutes to read this: “The wilderness of the medically unexplained.” There’s not much in the way of a take-home message here: it’s mostly just a really well-written and heart-wrenching tale of a cancer that flew under the diagnostic radar for quite a while. It’s going to be poignant for anyone who has felt like a medical mystery (so, you know, just about everyone with chronic pain). I’m not sure that anyone involved could have done much better. Things that are tough to diagnose are tough to diagnose, and that’s just life. And death.

But please, doctors (and anyone responsible for diagnosing): try to remember that when you hear hoofbeats in Texas, sometimes it really is bloody zebras, not horses.

PainSci Member Login » Submit your email to unlock member content. If you can’t remember/access your registration email, please contact me. ~ Paul Ingraham, PainSci Publisher