Magazine
Desk
| June 15, 2003, Sunday
THE WAY WE
LIVE NOW: 6-15-03: DIAGNOSIS; * Wife with
fatigue and abdominal pain; * Husband with a
'claw hand'
By Lisa Sanders, M.D. (NYT) 1423
words
Late Edition - Final , Section 6 ,
Page 19 , Column 3
LEAD PARAGRAPH
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1.Symptoms
The couple sat quietly as the intern and I
entered the examining room. He was a small
man with a muscular build. She appeared
older than her husband; her face was sad,
with lines etched deeply around her eyes. As
we were introduced, he moved quickly to
stand next to her. They had come to
Connecticut from Ecuador a few years ago,
they said, but had never needed to see a
doctor until now.
Their problems started about a year ago,
and now they'd each gotten bad enough to
seek help. Puzzlingly, their complaints
didn't appear to be related. She described
fatigue, constipation and a persistent pain
in her abdomen. ''Sometimes it's here in my
side,'' she reported through a translator.
''Other times it's an ache that seems to be
everywhere.'' But worse than this was a
fatigue as she had never felt before. She
was too tired to work. Sometimes, she said
sadly, she was too tired to get out of bed.
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