Diagnosis...

Today a man was referred to surgery clinic for a recurrent lipoma...but his main complaint was pains in his arms and legs. I'm not sure what exactly made me suspicious that he had diabetes. He was an otherwise thin, relatively healthy-looking older man. But, I knew that the lipoma certainly wasn't causing his neuropathic-type pain so I checked one of the few lab tests available: a blood sugar. it came back 247. Diabetes. I was a little surprised that my hunch was right. Usually, the only time I diagnose diabetes as a surgeon here is when a patient comes into clinic with a severely infected leg or hand. This time, we caught it before he needed an amputation and it was an easy punt to medicine clinic for medical treatment.

Speaking of diagnostic victories, our CBC (complete blood count) and electrolyte machines have not worked for the past couple of months. The story was that we were waiting for reagents to come from America. So, we would order tests and the lab slip would come back like so:

"babu" means "none"

So, I eventually stopped ordering lab tests except for blood levels, blood type, pregnancy tests, and the occasional thyroid hormone level.

Every once and awhile the broken CBC machine would come up in a conversation with Luke. Well, this week he went to visit a new friend of ours who is working in the lab. While he was in the lab he took a look at the CBC machine and the manual. Within a couple of hours he had diagnosed and  fixed the problem. Just like that. That man is good at fixing things!