She picked up a fat folder, full of lab tests, notes from offi ce visits, and
other documents. Ah yes, this was one of her challenging patients. Th e guy’s
hormones were seriously whacked, and trying to keep all of them in balance
plus dealing with his high blood pressure was a bit like juggling china plates
while riding a unicycle. As if that wasn’t enough, he kept coming up with
odd things. One morning his right eye stopped working, which led to the
diagnosis of an aneurysm in an artery immediately beneath the pituitary. Th e
aneurysm was probably due to radiation damage to the blood vessel walls in
the area of the tumor. Th ey had gone in and surgically wrapped it to hold it
together, but his recovery had taken months. Fourteen months later his right
eye began to work again, although he lost most of his peripheral vision. A
stroke he had two years later may have been due to radiation or due to high
blood pressure, but meant frustratingly long months of physical rehab. And of course, just
to make things
interesting, he had to have the stroke while he was in a jungle somewhere in Costa Rica.
He came home
from China testing positive for tuberculosis, from the Marshall Islands with beaver fever,
and from Costa
Rica with parasitic botfl ies burrowing under his skin. Botfl ies! Here in Illinois they only
infected sheep.
Maybe she was becoming a veterinarian.
Well, back to work. Let’s see…her patient was