Symptoms Of Unknown Origin: A Medical Odyssey

" . . . it is rare to find an articulate, analytic account of experience, and even rarer to see how it happened. Unlike a magician, Meador not only shows the empty hat but also where the rabbit was hidden. . . Meador taught himself to eschew mind-body dualism and to expand the range of communication between physicians and patients that can illuminate the meanings of symptoms. For these reasons, I recommend Meador's Medical Odyssey to family physicians who may be fellow travelers." - Family Medicine

“We owe Dr. Clifton Meador . . . a debt of gratitude for teaching us techniques to more effectively listen to the stories our patients want to tell.” - Journal of the American Medical Association

“Clifton Meador is undoubtedly a gifted clinician but his greater gift is his uncanny ability to capture and define the problems in medicine for which there are no easy labels and no easy cures. Meador’s thoughtful, anecdotal style allows every reader entry into that most complex of subjects: body and mind in health and disease.” – Abraham Verghese, author of My Own Country and The Tennis Partner

“Clif Meador does it again – a new book for physicians about patients who suffer in bewilderment with strange illnesses they do not understand. His stories and approach to ‘symptoms of unknown origin’ are compelling and thoughtful. Medicine is rarely cookie-cutter nor simply linear from the structure and process of molecular knowlege. The lost art of being a detective and talking productively to ‘odd’ patients is a special craft in much need of resurrection. The approach in this book makes a superb dent in the problem. Meador’s accumulated wisdom from practicing endocrinology for over fifty years is a great read that doesn’t disappoint.” –Eric G. Neilson, M.D., Chairman, Dept. of Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, author of Immunologic Renal Diseases

“Clifton Meador is a master clinician. This book adds to his legacy. He does not allow preconceived notions to interfere with his need to listen to his patients. He elicits their narrative of distress so that he can minister to the illness they are experiencing. SYMPTOMS OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN offers lessons for all who feel compelled to seek medical care, and for all who assume responsibility for providing such. Meador makes his points by relating clinical anecdotes in prose that is lucid and engaging.” – Nortin M. Hadler, M.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“The 50-year span of Dr. Meador's career has seen almost unimaginable changes in how physicians are educated, what practice is like, and what academic environments are like. Through this, Dr. Meador illustrates the importance of being a true physician with knowledge of the scientific but also the ability to communicate with patients and understand their illness from their point of view. This book would make a wonderful graduation present for a medical student - a way to help them understand that they have to think of their own career as an odyssey for them to control, as well as to help them understand that while in school teachers were appointed faculty, but once in practice their patients will be their most influential teachers. What Dr. Meador offers is an example of how to be a continuously learning physician, to keep an open and inquisitive mind, strive to listen, and not prematurely judge. This message might be equally important for experienced physicians, to remind us in these increasingly cynical times of the source of joy in practicing medicine.” - Stuart C. Gilman, MD, MPH, University of California, Irvine

“The book presents his professional growth in a series of case studies of difficult patients, each with an amazing story to tell. . . . The mix of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Kildare should interest doctor and patient alike.” - Nashville Scene
TOC
1 An Unlikely Lesson from a Medical Desert 5
2 Texas Heat 15
3 Dr. Drayton Doherty and Miss Cootsie 20
4 All Some Patients Need Is Listening and Talking 27
5 Diagnoses Without Diseases 33
6 The Woman Who Believed She Was a Man 40
7 Mind and Body 49
8 Sweet Thing 55
9 New Clinical Interventions 61
10 Florence's Symptoms 66
11 Symptoms without Disease 81
12 Looking Back on Fairhope 95
13 The Diarrhea of Agnes 102
14 Dr. Jim's Breasts 108
15 The Woman Who Would Not Talk 114

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