Patient: Doctor, my legs cramp up suddenly for no reason. A few times a month. No pattern, no trigger. Just a sudden leg cramp that goes away on its own after about 10 minutes.
Doctor: Ok, let me run some tests.
A week later:
Patient: Well?
Doctor: Oh, those tests came out clean. Let me run some more tests.
A month later:
Doctor: You have ILCS.
Patient: What's that?
Doctor: Idiopathic Leg Cramp Syndrome.
Patient: What does that mean?
Doctor: It means you have leg cramps, and we have no clue why.
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3 comments:
When I was young and doctors gave me dismissive answers for my small problems, I wished I had some real problem that would cause them to treat me seriously. Now that I have real problems, I miss those days.
Hey Snowbrush: Thanks so much for coming to the blog.
My issue was more with orphan diseases - issues that no one pays attention to because they are too small. I know of 3 ppl with the following syndromes - Idiopathic Thrombotic purpura (you get black spots when your platelets fall. We have no idea why.), MCNS - Minimal Change Nephrotic syndrome - your kidneys are not working properly, but it wont show up in a USG of the kidney, so we call it minimal change - kidny - issue, Sjogen's syndrome - you have dryness in your tissues. That's it. That's their diagnosis. They literally put the symptom, sometimes the name of the organ, the word "idiopathic" as the prefix and the word "syndrome" as the suffix.
I was told that my vocal cords quiver. When I asked for the name of the condition, I was told "quivering vocal cords."
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