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mahatmakanejeeves

(60,935 posts)
Sun Feb 13, 2022, 06:56 AM Feb 2022

She was headed to a locked psych ward. Then an ER doctor made a startling discovery.

Full disclosure: I have a weakness for the Washington Post's clickbait Medical Mysteries. Each one has links within to others. They can turn into a rabbit hole if you're not careful.

Medical Mysteries

She was headed to a locked psych ward. Then an ER doctor made a startling discovery.

A physician’s gut instinct about a young woman led to a diagnosis that had been overlooked for years

Yesterday at 9:00 a.m. EST

The 23-year-old patient arrived in the back of a police car and was in four point restraints — hands and feet strapped to a gurney — when emergency physician Elizabeth Mitchell saw her at a Los Angeles hospital early on March 17. ... Chloe R. Kral was being held on a 5150, shorthand in California for an emergency psychiatric order that allows people deemed dangerous to themselves or others to be involuntarily confined for 72 hours.

She had spent the previous six months at a private treatment center receiving care for bipolar disorder and depression. Chloe had improved and was set to move to transitional housing when she suddenly became combative and threatened to harm staff and kill herself. Police had taken her to the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai Marina del Rey Hospital before a planned transfer to a mental hospital.

Chloe, Mitchell recalled, was “mumbling about Rosa Parks” when they met. She managed to tell the doctor that she hadn’t used drugs or alcohol, but was otherwise incoherent. “We get a lot of psychiatric patients, and they’re just waiting for placement,” Mitchell said. ... But something indefinable — Mitchell characterized it as “maybe gut instinct” honed by nearly two decades of practice — prompted her to order a CT scan of Chloe’s head to better assess her mental status.

When she pulled up the image, Mitchell gasped. “I had never seen anything like it,” she said. She rounded up her colleagues and “made everyone in the whole ER come look.” ... “I was speechless,” she said. “All I could think was ‘How did no one figure this out?’ ” ... That question resonated more deeply after she spoke to Chloe’s mother. It was then that Mitchell learned about the stunning oversight that had resulted in years of needless anguish for Chloe and her family.

{snip}

[A teenager’s apparent clumsiness foreshadowed a shocking diagnosis]

{snip}

Sandra G. Boodman, a Washington Post staff writer for more than 30 years, created the Medical Mysteries column.

Submit your solved medical mystery to sandra.boodman@washpost.com. No unsolved cases, please. Read previous mysteries at wapo.st/medicalmysteries.


By Sandra G. Boodman
Sandra G. Boodman, a Washington Post staff writer for more than 30 years, created the Medical Mysteries column.
15 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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She was headed to a locked psych ward. Then an ER doctor made a startling discovery. (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Feb 2022 OP
A 'rabbit hole' indeed! MyOwnPeace Feb 2022 #1
If you don't have the ending please do not post this crap. overleft Feb 2022 #2
Yeah Mahat, can you summarize it in two or three sentences? 3Hotdogs Feb 2022 #5
All You Really Need To Know You Learned In Kindergarten mahatmakanejeeves Feb 2022 #15
Paywall Silver Gaia Feb 2022 #3
See my post number 11 for open links UpInArms Feb 2022 #12
Thanks! Silver Gaia Feb 2022 #14
What was the diagnosis? Sanity Claws Feb 2022 #4
That's what I wanted to know. blueinredohio Feb 2022 #6
Open link for everyone UpInArms Feb 2022 #11
How to get around the paywall at national newspapers mahatmakanejeeves Feb 2022 #7
let me guess -she had a brain tumor the size of a baseball? Blues Heron Feb 2022 #9
Diagnosis Naio Feb 2022 #8
thanks! Blues Heron Feb 2022 #10
i love these stories. nyt has one of these columns, too. they did a netflix series. mopinko Feb 2022 #13

MyOwnPeace

(17,275 posts)
1. A 'rabbit hole' indeed!
Sun Feb 13, 2022, 07:13 AM
Feb 2022

Just what I need - another excuse to sit in front of the screen instead of getting up and getting things done!

mahatmakanejeeves

(60,935 posts)
7. How to get around the paywall at national newspapers
Sun Feb 13, 2022, 08:38 AM
Feb 2022

Because the Washington Post, like the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal., is a national newspaper, it is almost certainly available on your public library's database. As in, available for free, with no paywall.*

You don't have to go to the library. Since you're reading this, you have access to a computer. Log into your account at the library and find the database of newspapers. The Post will be there. Ask your librarian for help if you need it.

Articles in the Coday, Wyoming, Enterprise, the Fairhope, Alabama, Times, or the Kodiak, Alaska, Daily Mirror might be just a bit harder to find.

I'll keep posting this as many times as I have to.

* Free, in the sense that you'll pay for it with your taxes. That kind of free.

Blues Heron

(6,131 posts)
9. let me guess -she had a brain tumor the size of a baseball?
Sun Feb 13, 2022, 08:49 AM
Feb 2022

benign, but no one figured it out until it started pressing on her brain in a way that mimiced bipolar disorder?

Or was she born with half a brain? What was the diagnosis bro!

Naio

(184 posts)
8. Diagnosis
Sun Feb 13, 2022, 08:46 AM
Feb 2022

An MRI scan determined that Chloe's hydrocephalus was caused by aqueductal stenosis, a narrowing between the ventricles that caused an obstruction. The obstruction, which was present at birth, was partial and her brain compensated until it no longer could, said neurosurgeon Ray M. Chu, who treated her at Cedars-Sinai

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