Newborns can't tell us what's wrong, all they can do is tell us that something is wrong, and it's up to us to figure it out. Sometimes that's terrifyingly difficult. A case reported this week in the New England Journal of Medicine concerns an eight-week-old boy who wouldn't stop crying. The pediatrician couldn't find anything wrong, but after a week of crying, the baby became weaker until he couldn't nurse. He was rushed to the emergency room. There he underwent a battery of tests, x-rays, blood tests, an MRI, and even a spinal tap. They couldn't find the source of the illness, but suspected an infection and started a round of antibiotics. Then he stopped breathing and had to be intubated.
The good news is that the baby is fine now. The story of how doctors went about finding the cause of his plight by the process of elimination is gripping, and the diagnosis of a relatively rare illness is eye-opening. The baby spent three weeks in the hospital after coming close to death. Dr. House would have solved it instantly within an hour, but we all know that was fiction. Read a hair-raising account of the medical mystery at Ars Technica.
(Unrelated image credit: Inferis)
Newest 5 Comments
From their honey boo-boo, to the parental abuse of your mother jumping on you, to giving birth to a one year old, I'm sure we can all agree to the moral of this story: never give your baby honey to calm them, give them alcohol instead.
Abusive comment hidden.
(Show it anyway.)
My dad was a master beekeeper and president of SEMBA off and on for years. He and my mother would put a drop of honey in their eyes "to prevent cataracts". It was a German custom that he'd found in a book about bees and their honey. Well, I was stupid enough to try it and had a severe allergic reaction and ended up in the hospital with strips of tissue from my eye sloughing off and the center of the eyeball pressing inward which made the white part of the eye swell and continue to leak tissue from my eye. 8 hours later and several bags of saline slowly leaked onto my eye and liquid benadryl in an iv I got to go home with no lasting effects. So, boys and girls, do NOT put honey in your eyes! I'm terrified of shampoos, conditioners and facial cleansers that have honey in them in case they get in my eyes.
Abusive comment hidden.
(Show it anyway.)
Point taken. It was always within an hour.
Abusive comment hidden.
(Show it anyway.)
To be fair, Dr. House never solved anything instantly.
Abusive comment hidden.
(Show it anyway.)
I didn't know, and my mother jumped all over me about it. But my daughter was already a year old when I got her.
Abusive comment hidden.
(Show it anyway.)