Misdiagnosis of Juvenile Diabetes Type 1
Friends of ours just discovered their 6 year old son has Juvenile Diabetes. The look of pain on Mom and Dad’s face is transparent as Jordon takes his shot, but being the little trooper he is, Jordon tells them not to worry “Don’t worry, I’ll get used to it”?.
The day before entering the hospital, Jordon was urinating every 30 minutes which clued the parents in that something was not right. His blood sugar level was at 497 and he was immediately referred to another hospital more equipped to deal with this form of Diabetes.
Diabetes Misdiagnoses
What is odd is that Jordon went in for a test a few months before and everything checked out fine. Now, he’s diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. More odd, was that the doctor specializing in this field asked if Jordon had any recent significant events, such as surgery.
Jordon did in fact have surgery to have tubes placed in his ears a month or so before. Upon hearing this, the doctor seemed concerned and said “He Did?” it’s not much, but the expression on the doctor’s face and the way the question was asked hinted that the doctor knew something. Nothing else was mentioned and the doctor continued the consultation.
Perhaps the doctor knew something or has seen enough to make a conclusion, but in the medical industry, and for legal purposes, you just don’t mention a hypothesis without factual information, so I’m guessing.
I’ve seen misdiagnoses many times; let me quickly tell you about two serious errors. I had a lump on my tongue which doctors lopped off, tested and diagnosed with cancer. A throat specialist was smart enough to suspect that I had Mono and retested (at 38, it’s rare and can mimic cancer); Mono it was, no cancer and the lump was simply a swollen glad brought on by Mono. Without the retest, I can only imagine what would have happened!
While living in Florida (we are originally from and now living in Michigan) my wife was diagnosed with a hyperthyroid (an overactive thyroid gland that causes excessive sweating, tremors, heart problems, etc). The doctors wanted to use radioactive Iodine to kill part of the thyroid to bring it back down to normal levels.
Luckily, we never had the procedure and moved back to Michigan shortly after. It was a misdiagnoses and within two months, her thyroid went back to normal! Turns out it was the climate, but the doctors never suggested this (or perhaps didn’t know about it). Had she killed part of the thyroid, she would now have the opposite problem, a hypothyroid!
Cure for Juvenile Diabetes
The point is that there may be an underlying cause to some cases of Juvenile Diabetes that the doctor may not be aware of or can’t legally say. If we can find a pattern, we can hone in on the cause and hopefully, find a less invasive (or natural) treatment.
Perhaps when the body is traumatized, such as surgery for ear tubes, it somehow causes something in the body to produce more sugar. Doctors are not even sure what causes diabetes, but perhaps the information found here may help Jordon or others in some way.As it stands, Jordon’s life has changed, forever.
How you can Help
Perhaps you, your child or someone you know has also had surgery or trauma of some type before being diagnosed with Juvenile or Type 1 Diabetes? If you have any information whatsoever that may help, please leave a comment. You do not have to use your real name.
Disclaimer: I am in no way suggesting that you not seek medical advice or avoid treatment but rather looking for ideas, suggestions and creative thought.
Written by Jim on April 16th, 2005 with
6 comments.
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Vaccines are not mandatory in many states and we need to seriously question the increasing number of vaccines for our children (a total of 48 by age 6).
People do have vaccine reactions and maybe there could be something related to that? Was the child vaccinated close to the time he was diagnosed with diabetes?
There are far fewer misdiganosis than you think. “Misdiagnosis” are created becuase they are extremely profitable; they create business where there was none. There was a surgeon on 20/20 who was putting stents in people who had no illnes at all. Referring to one of the stories above, I don’t believe for a second that in the 21st century medical labs can’t tell the difference between mono cells and cancer cells, but cancer treatment is very profitable and the more misdiagnosis of cancer the more profit. How many people have been told they beat cancer after having medical therapy of some sort when in actuality they never had cancer to begin with? I bet it’s much higher than anyone would believe.
Greedy doctors and hospitals are not isolated incidences, they are rampant.
Roger
It’s true that misdiagnoses are incredibly profitable, not only to the health care industry but to the patients when found out. I just don’t see doctors not saying anything to increase money to a harvest they won’t reap. Physicians’ reputations are on the line.
That being said, I agree 100 percent that many physicians jump to conclusions or to diagnoses all too quickly. Patients demand quick answers and turn-around-times, but physicians should not.
Mono is very very difficult to diagnose, as it’s in the same family as herpes viruses, and is very difficult to distinguish from epstein-barr virus, for example. I have a recurring problem with oral herpes that has grown from a very infrequent problem on my lip to be something that involves the glands in my neck, which hurt terribly, and often send my white count into the area of “uh-oh, could be cancer, we better make sure”. No one is misdiagnosing me, they are making sure that the old diagnosis is still the right diagnosis. I can’t complain about that.
I have also been recently diagnosed as having diabetes incipidus… it’s water diabetes, not sugar diabetes, although it shows many similar symptoms to the sugar kind. I’m sure glad they took their time testing me to find out which one it was.
I would just suggest that GPs send their patients to well known specialists for as much testing and confirmation as possible.
I am a medical student and I hope I might be able to give you some idea of what might be going on, bearing in mind that nothing I say should be taken as definitive medical advice– please do consult a physician before making any sort of decision based on what loons on the internet (myself included) have to say.
First off, I take offense to the other commenters’ cynical suggestions that doctors routinely trump up nonexistent illnesses to treat invasively for money. There are always bad seeds, and medicine is a profession where you have tremendous power to harm people– but by and large, I can assure you that doctors are just regular people like you, trying to do a good job. Like you, they occasionally make mistakes. And also like you, I presume, they want to make money to support themselves and their families– but not by harming you with painful, invasive, unnecessary treatment.
To the original author: I am very sorry to hear that your son developed diabetes, and I wish all of you the best. I can say, straightaway, however, that Type I diabetes is an autoimmune disease. It occurs when your immune cells (for a variety of reasons) “recognize” the insulin-secreting cells of the pancreas as foreign and attack them. There is no known mechanism that could associate surgery (other than, say, organ transplant) with autoimmunity of any kind.
The doctor you spoke to was most likely just trying to take a thorough and accurate history, but he may have been wondering whether your son had abdominal surgery that might have injured his pancreas. It is very unlikely that such an injury would present with diabetes alone, or with diabetes at all, because of the way the insulin-secreting cells are dotted across the pancreas– but it is a theoretical possibility.
In thinking about a patient’s problem doctors try to consider as many possibilities as they can, even if they ultimately go on to treat the most likely one (or to order further tests.) Abdominal surgery, could, in theory, cause diabetes (this would not actually be type I diabetes, since it is not autoimmune.) Surgery in the Eustachian tubes (which I had myself when I was very young because of recurrent ear infections) could NOT disrupt the pancreas, since the pancreas is in the abdomen and the eustachian tubes are in the skull.
The pensive expression you saw was most likely the doctor thinking about the detail you told him about the surgery and double-checking in his mind to make sure that it did not fit– and also that it would not complicate the treatment of your son’s diabetes. Doctors do this kind of double-checking all the time, since medicine is an enormous field, and if you do not stop and reconsider, it would be easy to miss something. He would be stupid to hide anything from you in this situation, as there is nothing to hide.
Regarding your misdiagnoses, the commenter above me rightly pointed out that mononucleosis is very difficult to differentiate from lymphoma, and that it is very important to get good samples reviewed by a skilled pathologist. No doctor wants to miss a case of lymphoma, for reasons that I hope are obvious. Your instinct was absolutely right– seeking a second opinion from a specialist was appropriate; I would have hoped, however, that your first doctor would have tried to confirm the diagnoses more definitively (or referred you to another physician) before, say, starting you on chemotherapy.
As for your wife’s thyroid incident, this was not a misdiagnosis per se. Thyroid disorders are quite tricky, and can arise and disappear mysteriously. I am not a physician, but I do believe that caution is important. In general, unless the doctor suspects cancer (and I presume he did the necessary tests to rule it out), hyperthyroidism is rarely an immediate emergency and can be watched.
Sometimes it does go away; more commonly, it does not. Recommending immediate radioiodine treatment may have been on the hastier side, but it does not make it the wrong decision; ultimately, as I’m sure you know, the decision is yours. The doctor’s recommendation is just that, a recommendation.
To the commenter on vaccines: it is true that there are some tenuous but possible links between vaccinations and autoimmune diseases (note that Type I diabetes is *not* one of the autoimmune disease on this list– studies have consistently failed to establish any kind of link.)[1]
Your comment comes appallingly close to suggesting that parents should not vaccinate their children, or that vaccines are some sort of money-making scam. Vaccines are, in fact, largely unprofitable for doctors and drug companies and developed with a great deal of government funding because the evil medical conspiracy wants to control your life by preventing you from dying of measles, mumps, whooping cough, diphtheria, hepatitis B, or polio– those vicious money-grubbing pigs.
References:
1.Schattner, A. “Consequence or coincidence? The occurrence, pathogenesis and significance of autoimmune manifestations after viral vaccines.” _Vaccine_, Jun 10;23(30):3876-86. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.galter.northwestern.edu/pubmed/15917108?ordinalpos=6&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
I had strep throat so my regular doctor who didn’t recognize it sent me to a throat specialist in Glendale. He looked at it for a moment and told me it was polyps and gave me a number medicine instead of what I needed. I went on thinking it was going to go away. One day I could barely stand up and was very weak. My throat already had broken out with with like tissue a number of times. After reading though a bit and I’m not a medical student I managed to get to the doc demanding an antiobiotic. He gave it to me but even my regular doctor couldn’t understand what the sickness was. Strep throat should be easy to recognize especially by a throat specialist. You see white spots on someone’s throat. Now my sickness developed into full fledged reuhmatic fever which happens when strep throat isn’t treated. I suffered with Rhuematic fever for five years to say the least which isn’t a happy condition to be in. By the time I found out I also was passed the statue of limitations which didn’t allow me to sue the throat specialist at least. I fought day in and out constantly being put back on anti biotics because with Rheumatic fever strep throat breaks out whenever it feels like. When I went to hospital one day there was a rash on my chest which looked sort of like Scarlett fever rash. The doctor’s couldn’t understand what it was. It was idiotic though cause now I realize all they had to do was a skin test. It took my regular docs years to give me an anti allergy shot though after giving me creams for years and years with no let up. The anti allergy sort of shot worked some. Why do docs not perform tests when they can and don’t know?
Then I had uterine fibroids. Fibroids are a condition of growth(s) on a female’s uturs which is non cancerous. Many many women have fibroids today and don’t know it. Some have pain, heavy menstruation. back aches, and headaches all caused by fibroids which are also fibroid tumors. Fibroids thrive by a blood supply that makes them grow. They are in no way connected to cancer or have an ability to turn into cancer. I got sent to a Cancer Hospital, a ritzy wealthy looking building in downtown Los Angeles area. There I met a specialist and surgeon who took my envelope with 3 thousand dollars of MRI’s done. In ten minutes he told me that I had cancer and he would do a hysterectomy. I brushed him off not really taking him seriously at all. To me he seemed either to be old styled or real old schooled from another country although looked like he was in his late 30’s and should have had enough experience to tell the difference between fibroids and anything else. He seemed gung ho about cutting my child making equipment out of me as well. It was all said too fast as well. I left leaving my MRI’s there with him. I don’t believe I saw him look at the MRI’s either. He was just gung ho to do a surgery. I went to UCLA and had to wait quite awhile before seeing other doctors who checked everything allover again. In fact there was a team of doctors checking the area and looking into what was going on with me. They confirmed that I had fibroid tumors and not cancer. This way I knew for sure and had the proper information to take the proper actions instead of jumping into some dangerous and unneccessary surgery. The fibroids were very painfull and caused some heavy bleeding though in the meantime but I researched and looked up my options. I also saw one more doctor a Cedar’s Saini Hospital - a doctor OB/GYM who studied abroad. He wanted to do regular surgery but not the usual style bikini cut they do today. He was also old school and unlearned. He wanted to cut me open from my belly button to uterine area which is larger, more invasive, and more dangerous. Hemmorraging can happen with this type of surgery. I was against that as well and didn’t trust his advise either. I found out UCLA was doing a surgery called Uturine Artery Embolization which was a very new procedure at that time. No other hospital that I knew of in the vicinity was doing the procedure but it looked promising and I had a good feeling about it! I was the 75th patient to do the procedure at UCLA and they also accepted my insurance. They also promised me that the surgery only may shrink the fibroid tumors mabe up to 80%. But I was ready. The day I went through the surgery I was kept awake on the table. They had fine excellent equipment it seemed which I hadn’t seen at other hospitals. The surgery involved a tiny little cut on the inside of my inside thigh in which they inserted an instrument to insert some type of particles into the main artery of the uturus. It didn’t hurt although I was under some form of anasthesia. It didn’t take long and they had plenty of doctors at my side, a nice nurse, and students. I was also on a catheter. I lay in hospital bed overnight and suffered from pain but I think it was more the pain from catheter than anything else. I think the next day I went home. Over some time the fibroids shrunk and the pain went away. I stopped having heavy heavy menstruation which was sometimes embarrassing. It was so painful prior to surgery at times that any relief was great relief. After a time I decided I may need another one to shrink the last 20% and had a specialist look into it. After testing me he called me and told me I was not a candidate for this surgery because the doctor’s at UCLA did such a tremendous job that there was no way that he could improve upon it. I was sort of glad to hear a doc was honest though and sought him out of another hospital so I could tell he wasn’t out to back the hospital in unnessary profit making. (**) Some docs and related may be blindsighted by a secret threat to earn income and profits for the moguls who run and work behind the scenes and get pressured into wrong diagnosis and stuff like that.
Now I’m going through it it seems again on a different diagnosis. It has put me through some very hard times now. Yes there should be more than one pathologist on any condition to review slides. I was told by the doctor’s at Glendale Adventist that no pathologist would overwrite another pathologist (what sort of criminal thinking is this and thing to say to me?). So the best thing to do is mabe go to a place and pretend I don’t have a patholigst’s report and get another opinion. This way they won’t want to gang up and form a wrong diagnosis committee in secret. It works sort of like the secret service or white house staff at times or police. They all seem to cover for eachother and whereas police are known to commit crimes, write false testimony and tickets to people, come up with stories they cohorts and departments, judges, and the system is usually quick to cover up and let them get off the hook or with just a slap on the wrist. It’s wrong, unethical and immoral but it is quite apparent allover America through my own research and experiences.
If pathologists and doctor’s work this way for some unseen boss who earns a fortune from body parts, surgery, or the like than it is just another mass crime.
I’m still wondering a bit how many unneccessary uterus’ were removed because a doctor just said so.
Right now I have a breast issue. While I was diagnosed with a fibroadenoma which is NOT Cancer the pathologist said otherwise. I got to the point as to I brought my own microscope and demanded the slides to see for myself. They only had one pathologist who didn’t even give me a definite diagnosis. After calling the Pathology dept demanding another answer and antoher pathologist no one “called me back”, just ignoring me as if I’m some dummy idiot off the street or “mentally disabled” and they can take and do what they want. After intense studies I find the mass to be a lobular fibroadenoma. I’m not a doctor but that is what I see under the microscope. The pathologist reported “infiltrative carcinoma with lobular features”. What sort of diagnostic is that? What she saw under the micrscope were the staining which brought to focus my breast lobules which look very much the same much of the time under a microscope as breast lobule tissues. The grape like appearance can be called anything from Lobular Carcinoma In Situ. She also called it this. I’m not ousting her opinion completely but from my studies of all the breast cancers known of today the tissue samples look like a fibroadenoma within a lobular center. All medical journals and studies online say that fibroadenoma is a benign uncancerous condition.
(I’m also wondering here how many women since the breast cancer stats are so very high are being misdiagnosed with cancer when they only have a fibroadenoma or fibroglandualar condition). Under the microscope fibroadenoma fibroblasts have the same sort of appearance and depending on where it is cells that are in fact ducts or lobules within the breast can be called carcinoma when they are not in fact carcinoma at all. A fibroadenoma which pushed on the breast lobules can push the lobule cells some to make them appear atypical which would resemble atypical cells of carcinoma. I see as to where they may have a hard time looking for the right and definite diagnosis and that it is why it is urgent and most necessary beyond any rebutted reason to make sure that second, third, and fourth opinions are sought after by very experienced pathologists. One tired pathologist with a ton of work to do may just not be doing the job right. In fact someone new to the feild could conclude that every fibroadenoma is a cancer and then cause terrible emotional problems in families and victims. Besides this is the after effect of what a diagnosis of cancer could cause including terrible depression which incites loss of appetite, loss of sex drive, loss of will to work and enjoy life and a just a terrible gloom which could make a patient look to family members as if they are sick, or tired because of the cancer when in fact they are not!
This same hospital originally diagnosed the same location with a benign cyst instead four years prior.. Cysts do not become cancer 99.9% of the time. Cysts are non cancerous as well. So how do I have cancer all of a sudden in the same general location? It just doesn’t make much sense.
Any doctor if sees a patient is diagnosed with cancer from a pathologist should make sure there are various opinions before concluding a diagnosis. One diagnosis is just not proof enough.
By the way the uturine fibroid surgery was done in 2001. It is now 2008 and I’m doing great. The misdiagnosis of cancer came in 1991. I waited a long time for a surgery.
But now not knowing if I have just fiboradenoma or cancer has made me suffer tremendously. I also had to spend plenty of money on alternative healing methods in the meantime while I was waiting for an MRI approval and seeking out doctors that would accept my sort of low grade insurance. It was hard. My family also suffered over me. If I find out it was not cancer and I endured all that what then? Now I have to almost fight to get other opinions whereas the hospital should have originally sent the slides out to other pathological units for further study and investigation to confirm a diagnosis. It is all too easy for them to just say someone has cancer if they don’t as well.
I know I have a very good lawsuite possibly if it is in fact cancer because they misdiagnosed it four years prior and I could have had the treatment four years ago. It is emotionally upsetting and tiring at times to deal with all these people as well and the drama involved.
Hospitals need to definitely incorporporate a definite system of multible pathological studies on serious illnesses. UCLA had a whole crew of doctors review my conditions before making decisions with me, whey not other hospitals. Whereas the rich and wealthy-ritzy cancer center I went to with the fancy offices and expensive look had barely a patient and one little doctor who didn’t even review my MRI’s just could blurt out the terrible 3 words, “you have cancer” and get away with it. When I called to obtain my MRI’s as well they dissappeared and that doctor’s office stated, they didn’t know or didn’t have the MRI”s so it was quite obvious the doctor tried to cover up for his lies and criminal intent by hiding or discarding of my MRI’s. I didn’t make him sign anything to hold and obtain my MRI’s either. I see how a criminal doctor could work his evil….