Diagnosis: Solving the Most Baffling Medical Mysteries

As a Yale School of Medicine physician, theNew York Timesbestselling author ofEvery Patient Tells a Story,and an inspiration and adviser for the hit Fox TV dramaHouse, M.D.,Lisa Sanders has seen it all. And yet she is often confounded by the cases she describes in her column: unexpected collections of symptoms that she and other physicians struggle to diagnose.A twenty-eight-year-old man, vacationing in the Bahamas for his birthday, tries some barracuda for dinner. Hours later, he collapses on the dance floor with crippling stomach pains. A middle-aged woman returns to her doctor, after visiting two days earlier with a mild rash on the back of her hands. Now the rash has turned purple and has spread across her entire body in whiplike streaks. A young elephant trainer in a traveling circus, once head-butted by a rogue zebra, is suddenly beset with splitting headaches, as if someone were "slamming a door inside his head."In each of these cases, the path to diagnosis--and treatment--is winding, sometimes frustratingly unclear. Dr. Sanders shows how making the right diagnosis requires expertise, painstaking procedure, and sometimes a little luck. Intricate, gripping, and full of twists and turns,Diagnosisputs readers in the doctor's place. It lets them see what doctors see, feel the uncertainty they feel--and experience the thrill when the puzzle is finally solved.