Medical Mysteries
I got it from my mama
Looking back, there are many reasons why many people would consider my childhood to be “abnormal” - chiefly that my mother happens to be a brilliant physician scientist, who’s spent her entire career working to cure cancer. And as a result, my siblings and I grew up knowing a ton of concepts and terminology that we had no business knowing at our age; for instance, our insult of choice as five-year-olds was to call someone a “fomite.” (fom·i·te - objects or materials which are likely to carry infection, such as clothes, utensils, and furniture.)
Some of my fondest memories growing up were on long hikes with my family. We spent a ton of time exploring the outdoors, and on these hikes, we would have lots of time to fill with conversation. As you can imagine, with three fussy children, this was a bit of a task for my parents. My mom, the genius thinker that she is, began filling the time on these hikes with “medical mysteries.”
Thinking like a little doctor
For those who don’t know, medical mysteries are case studies for doctors or aspiring doctors, where you get told a hypothetical patient’s symptoms as if they came into your office seeking medical attention. It is then your job as the doctor to ask questions to learn more about their condition, their background, their recent activity, etc. in order to arrive at a diagnosis.
For hours, we would walk through forests and up mountains, using nothing but questions to figure out that the couple with extreme nausea had eaten toxic mushrooms on their recent camping adventure; the young woman with violent stomach cramps was secretly pregnant and in labor; the child who was progressively underperforming in school lived in a home with lead painted walls.
This activity taught us to think and question like doctors do - even if we didn’t understand the complexity of the medical issues we were uncovering. We always started by asking for a patient’s vital signs (body temperature, pulse, respiration rate, and blood pressure), demographic information, and about the results of their physical exam. Next, we learned that several common questions tended to reveal crucial details time and time again:
When did you first start to notice these symptoms?
Have you been traveling lately?
Do you have a history of illness?
Have you eaten anything out of the ordinary (for you) recently?
Can you tell me about your living situation?
Have you made any changes to your routine recently?
Asking the right questions to solve the puzzle
Unbeknownst to us at the time, our mother was teaching us a fundamental skill: how to use questions to uncover pieces of a puzzle. Each medical mystery starts out with very little information, and each question narrows down the number of possible medical conditions - until you’re left with one diagnosis.
Furthermore, these medical mysteries taught us patience; we learned that one question rarely paints the full picture. Collecting clues takes time, and you need to keep all the answers in mind because you never know where a connection will appear.