Without context or cushion, do online medical results make sense?
As she herded her two young sons into bed one evening late last December, Laura Devitt flipped through her phone to check on the routine blood tests that had been...
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A dog bite sent him to the ER. A cascade of missteps nearly killed him
Becky Krall hurried through the sliding-glass doors of the hospital emergency room around 8 a.m. on Sept. 25, 2015, expecting to see her feverish husband, David, sitting among the patients...
She thought she’d pulled hip muscles, but 6 doctors couldn’t diagnose her pain
As she rose from the dinner table one night in February 2016, Annie Karp winced as she felt a penetrating ache deep in her hips. Unable to straighten up for...
A mouth so sore she couldn’t eat: A medical mystery, then finally relief
Elizabeth Starrels sat in the examining chair of a Washington ear, nose and throat specialist in October 2012, weeping in frustration and pain. For the previous four months, Starrels, then...
For half her life, doctors told her to lose weight, but something else was going on
To Deborah E. Savage, a trip to the doctor was frequently an exercise in humiliation. For more than 15 years, Savage's doctors doled out the same advice: You need to...
What caused a newborn twin’s badly swollen legs
Heather Ferguson was beside herself. The 34-year-old mother of 2-month-old twin boys had just spent several days in a Charlotte, Va., hospital with one son as he underwent diagnostic tests...
Being a super-user isn’t always so super
A 58-year-old Maryland woman breaks her ankle, develops a blood clot and, unable to find a doctor to monitor her blood-thinning drug, winds up in an emergency room 30 times...