“It was my wife’s walker, and I’ve never used one before. Sorry that I keep bumping into things.”
He was in his early 70s, recently widowed. He hadn’t needed a walker until yesterday, and his son had gotten it out of the garage where they’d just stowed it away. I showed him how to change the height setting on it so he didn’t have to lean so far over.
Dr. Allan M. Block
His daughter was a longstanding patient of mine, and now she and her brother were worried about their dad. He’d been so healthy for years, taking care of their mother as she declined with cancer. Now, 2 months since her death, he’d started going downhill. He’d been, understandably, depressed and had lost some weight. A few weeks ago he’d had some nonspecific upper respiratory crud, and now they were worried he wasn’t eating. He’d gotten progressively weaker in the last few days, leading to their getting out the walker.
I knew my patient for several years. She wasn’t given to panicking, and was worried about her dad. By this time, I was too. Twenty-eight years of neurology training and practice puts you on the edge for some things. The “Spidey Sense,” as I’ve always called it, was tingling.
It took a very quick neurologic exam to find what I needed. He was indeed weak, had decreased distal sensation, and was completely areflexic. It was time to take the most-dreaded outpatient neurology gamble: The direct office-to-ER admission.
I told his daughter to take him to the nearby ER and scribbled a note that said “Probable Guillain-Barré. Needs urgent workup.” They were somewhat taken aback, as they had dinner plans that night, but his daughter knew me well enough to know that I don’t pull fire alarms for fun.
As soon as they’d left I called the ER doctor and told her what was coming. My hospital days ended 2 years ago, but I wanted to do everything I could to make sure the right ball was rolling.
Then my part was over. I had other patients waiting, tests to review, phone calls to make.
This is where the anxiety began. Nobody wants to be the person who cries wolf, or admits “dumps.” I’ve been on both sides of admissions, and bashing outpatient docs for unnecessary hospital referrals is a perennial pastime of inpatient care.
I was sure of my actions, but as the hours crept by some doubt came in. What if he got to the hospital and suddenly wasn’t weak? Or it was all from a medication error he’d made at home?
No one wants to claim they saw a flare when there wasn’t one, or get the reputation of being past their game. I was worried about the patient, but also began to worry I’d screwed up and missed something else.
I finished the day and went home. After closing out my usual end-of-the-day stuff I logged into the hospital system to see what was going on.
Normal cervical spine MRI. Spinal fluid had zero cells and elevated protein.
I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed back into my chair. I’d made the right call. The hospital neurologist had ordered IVIG. The patient would hopefully recover. No one would think I’d screwed up a potentially serious case. And, somewhere in the back of my mind, the Sherlock Holmes inside every neurologist tipped his deerstalker cap at me and gave a slight nod.
There’s the relief of having done the right thing for the patient, having made the correct diagnosis, and, at the end of the day, being reassured that (some days at least) I still know what I’m doing.
It’s those feelings that brought me here and still keep me going.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.