An interesting medical conundrum

A long time patient of mine asked me to see his adult son as a new patient.  My practice has been closed to new patients for a long time, but I agreed to see the fellow, who currently lived in L.A.  The story was that the son had been deteriorating to the point of being unable to function gradually for the past couple of years.  A lengthy hospital admission and over $70,000 in addition to the extensive insured investigations revealed nothing.

The long and short of it was that the fellow was eventually convinced by some sort of Naturopath that he was suffering from chronic "black mold exposure" - which led to even more deterioration of the fellow's financial resources.  An interesting point in the history was that this fellow's symptoms of diffuse joint and muscle pain, fatigue, mild depression, insomnia and other constitutional symptoms did were investigated with all kinds of bloodwork and imaging studies.

The "American Team of Physicians" did, however, find that this fellow had antibodies to H. Pylori - the bacteria implicated in stomach ulcers.  Further investigation revealed that the fellow had been suffering from bleeding ulcers.  The Physicians treated the fellow with a proton pump inhibitor (a medication that turns off the stomach's ability to make acid)....but within a few weeks, the fellow's symptoms of joint and muscle pain, fatigue, etc. became a great deal worse!  He stated that while his stomach was sore - he actually felt constitutionally better when he had his ulcer!

He then discontinued the medication and got his ulcer back - but at least the rest of him felt a little better.....he then went bankrupt form the "American Medical Experience" and ended up moving to Calgary where I saw him in consultation.

After really listening to the fellow, it turned out that we could discern several facts:

1) He felt like crap with muscle/joint pain with weakness and fatigue

2) He had a bleeding ulcer/gastritis

3) Treatment of the bleeding ulcer/gastritis made him worse

There was only really one thing that could explain this....and it turned out to be correct!

An investigation revealed that the poor fellow had been suffering from hemochromatosis - a disease that results in iron overload....the excess iron accumulates in various organs and soft tissues of the body, making the person with the disease feel terrible.  The only real treatment for hemochromatosis is getting bled on a regular basis to "remove" excess iron from the body.

The poor fellow's hemochromatosis was being treated by his bleeding stomach!  Which is why the treatment of his bleeding ulcer - although it made his ulcer/stomach bleeding better - made his hemochromatosis worse!

Cost to the patient for his diagnosis in Canada after being undiagnosed in the U.S. for $70,000+?  ------------> $0.00. (other than Alberta Health Care premiums).