He was prostrate for 11 years because of a rare disease, had invented surgery and could be cured

The symptoms of an extremely strange illness began to change the life of Doug Lindsay, 21, around 1999, when he was in the final year of biology at a university in Kanas City, Missouri (United States). -United).

One day, the young man collapsed on the dining room table and everything was spinning. The symptoms of his illness were more and more intense and intractable. Heart acceleration, feeling of weakness and frequent dizziness. He could only walk 50 meters and could not stand more than a few minutes.

This strange illness that touched him would make him spend 11 years in a hospital bed at his home in San Luis. The doctors who treated him were disconcerted and the proposed treatments did not succeed. So it's a day that the young man decided that if he wanted to recover his health and his life, he should do it himself.

The mysterious and cruel illness that affected Lindsay had also already attacked her mother and a young man's aunt. Both women suffered from chronic weakness, for which they could barely stand up. They could not tie their own shoes.

"When I called my mother that night to tell her that I had to leave the university, we both knew it," the boy said. The family curse had knocked on the door, according to the site of
CNN in Spanish.

This fall of 1999 and for many years still, the young man would stay in bed 22 hours a day. He has just got up to eat and go to the bathroom.

Determined to find a way out

Lindsay visited many doctors to find out what was wrong with her. Endocrinologists, neurologists, internists and other specialties. When they finally referred him to a psychiatrist, the boy realized that he had to solve his problem himself.

Previously, while he was at the university, Linsday had collected in a trash can a book on endocrinology of 2,200 pages, in order to be able to help his mother. The young man returned to this voluminous publication in the hope of finding an answer to these two questions. There he found a pbadage which dealt with disorders of the adrenal glands situated above the two kidneys, in the lower part of the abdomen.

With the help of old textbooks, the prostrate young man has hypothesized that there might be autonomic nervous system disorders that have not been listed or recognized by most endocrinologists or neurologists.

He went to work in the investigation and met the National Dysautonomy Research Foundation, which was investigating a type of disorder similar to the one that afflicted him, his mother and aunt. He asked them for more information on the subject. Although this material does not exactly match his illness, he was a little narrower.

In 2002, in a tie and wheelchair suit, he gave a presentation at an annual conference of the American Autonomous Society group, which scientists from around the world attended to talk about nervous system disorders and their disease.

There, he badured people that there was a drug that could help him, but they ignored him. It was difficult for him, without a university degree, to integrate into the scientific environment. But there was a doctor, Cecil Coghlan, a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, who believed that Lindsay might have something.

Too much adrenaline

In 2004, Lindsay's friends rented a van to put the young man in the box with a mattress and take him to Birmingham, where he would continue his investigations.

There, the boy, who already suspected that his adrenal glands were producing too much adrenaline, decided to use with him a drug called Levophed, which is essentially an injection of noradrelin, to counteract the symptoms of 39, excess of adrenaline.

He convinced his friend Coghlan to reuse this drug, originally created to increase blood pressure to control his illness, through a daily intravenous drip, which stabilized him and he even allowed to stay active for short periods at home.

"I could not lose everything anymore," said Lindsay. But he was still sick.

They find the diagnosis

Lindsay's suspicions were based on the fact that in her adrenal glands, there could be a tumor generating excess production of the hormone that was touching her. Or something that acts like a tumor.

In 2006, a new radiological examination showed that his adrenal glands "shone". It was an anomaly that corresponded to Lindsay's new theory.

Then Coghlan called Linsay to tell him the name of the disease: bilateral hyperplasia of the adrenal medulla.

Coghlan called Lindsay and said, "We found it!" Diagnosis: bilateral hyperplasia of the adrenal medulla.

This strange disease meant that the inner marrow or regions of the adrenal glands were enlarged and functioned as tumors. In this way, the glands produced too much adrenaline.

In badyzing the medical literature, the young man and Coghlan discovered that there were only 32 registered cases of this disease.

Again, Lindsay thought the solution to her problem could be simple. By surgery, the zucchini of the overglandal glands should be cut and, as if cutting a hard egg, it was necessary to remove the yolk and improve its health.

Lindsay's personal physician, Chris Bauer, described his illness as "an atypical presentation of a rare disease." He said that all professionals were learning with Doug as he progressed.

Pioneer of a new surgery

Just as Lindsay himself focused on researching the name of his illness, what he did, he also decided that, if there was no such thing as 39, surgical operation to treat his case, he should invent it himself.

He discovered a similar history of operations on dogs, rats and cats and developed, in a 363-page PDF, what could form the basis of the first adrenal medulectomy performed on a human being.

Then he worked for a year and a half to find a surgeon who would supervise the new procedure. This is difficult because surgeons may lose their license if an unproven procedure has gone awry or if complications occur. Insurance companies do not reimburse patients for unconventional procedures either.

Finally, Lindsay recruited a surgeon from the University of Alabama in Birmingham and, in September 2010, went to the university hospital where this doctor managed to remove the doctor. one of his adrenal medulla.

Three weeks later, the boy could sit for three hours. He had the strength to walk up to the church – a mile and a half – on Christmas Eve. In this special time of the year, while he was attending Mbad, he was beginning to feel that hope could win this game.

In 2012, he underwent a second surgery at the University of Washington, St. Louis, to remove the medulla from the remaining adrenal gland.

A year later, I was good enough to go with friends in the Bahamas. It was the first time in his life that he was seeing the ocean.

In early 2014, Lindsay was leaving some drugs.

His allied doctor, Coghlan, lived long enough to see Lindsay's remarkable recovery. He died in 2015.

Help other patients

With tremendous effort and never giving up, Lindsay managed to escape.

Unfortunately, her mother was not operated by the operation created by her son because she was already too weak to support her and died in 2016.

She could not see her son walking around again, nothing less than looking for a degree to be able to receive a degree in biology at the Rockhurst University that same year.

Lindsay is now 41 years old. Many of the friends he was planning to graduate with are now married and have children in elementary school.

Lindsay does not complain because she knows that the past can not be recovered. He still lives in his childhood home in San Luis and has to take nine meds a day. Health is not perfect, but he feels he is getting back to life.

Now he is working as a medical consultant. Other colleagues are turning to him for help in identifying and treating rare diseases like his own.

Lindsay has spoken at medical schools, including Stanford and Harvard, and a growing list of medical conferences. He is also working on the study of a case that will be published in the British Medical Journal.

Through his gift of solving problems impossible to decipher, he hopes to help guide other patients with difficult diseases on the road to integrity.

"I have received help from people and I now have to help people," Linsday said.

IN ADDITION