A mailman with POEMS syndrome on his route, a patient devastated by strokes, decides to chuck it all in and go to the track. A police officer from internal affairs survives a heart attack on the streets of Paris only to become a diagnostic puzzle when he presents with the most common of maladies, back pain. In the tradition of Oliver Sacks and “House,” Dr. Stuart Mushlin portrays cases from the common to the obscure. Along the way, we learn about a physician from the start of his career to its peak, learning, helping, and sometimes failing.
Playing the Ponies and Other Medical Mysteries Solved explores the process by which a physician approaches symptoms—acute, chronic, and sometimes life threatening. A seasoned Master Clinician with over forty years of practical experience, Dr. Stuart Mushlin has a different take on the road to getting the answers for his patients. In his case discussions, he emphasizes the art of listening, touching, and examining over high-tech developments in medicine, contending that diagnosing the underlying illness is secondary to truly healing the whole person. Mushlin begins with an examination of cases involving common symptoms such as back pain and x-ray findings and progresses to an examination of more serious illnesses involving major diseases such as tuberculosis that are often easily misdiagnosed.
