The biggest mistake when tackling a medical mystery is...

Information can be right and misleading!

In deciding to go to medical school, I had visions of heroic moments like I’d seen on TV. You know the type. A patient has some mysterious problem that nobody can figure out until the super genius doctor somehow cracks the case just in time. The answer is often some rare disease that no ordinary doctor would have even known about, let alone be able to recognize outside of a text book or medical journal.

In these shows, of which House, MD is the most prominent modern example, the “great doctor,” thinks of some test that had not been done. Once the diagnosis is made, the right treatment is given, and everyone lives happily ever after.

What I find in practice is actually the opposite of this, in two distinct ways.