Diagnosis: Solving the Most Baffling Medical Mysteries

Lisa Sanders, author of “Every Patient Tells a Story” comes up with something interesting in her new book Diagnosis. Aired as a Netflix series, this is a collection of unexpected cases of medical mysteries that she and other physicians came across in her career.

One interesting case-a middle-aged woman comes to her with a mild rash on the back of her hands with the rash turning purple. She had visited earlier but the rash has now spread into her entire body. In another case, an elephant trainer, head-butted by a zebra, came for diagnosis with complaints of splitting headaches.

In each of these cases, the diagnosis and treatment were unclear for Lisa. She thinks that expertise and luck are very important while making a diagnosis. The book is a real medical mystery thriller and keeps you on the edge of the seat. It lets the readers be in the doctor’s shoes and feel the uncertainty as it happened. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, where different clues are put together to make it complete.

Lisa is a Yale School of medicine physician and she personally collected information about these cases and put it together. As she rightly put it, the book is like a detective story where the stakes are high and risks are huge. But, in the end, what matters is the right diagnosis and correct treatment.