Alexandria Ostrem credits a fake TV doctor with saving her life.
The bubbly 19-year-old from Bellevue, Wash., loves to dance, ride horses — and watch a lot of "House M.D.," FOX TV's hit drama centering on Dr. Gregory House, a brilliant physician known for solving complex cases.
Last March, without any warning, Ostrem began having trouble walking. Remembering a “House” episode featuring a patient with a similar symptom, Ostrem diagnosed herself with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a sometimes fatal autoimmune disorder that attacks the nerves, first causing tingling and often leading to total paralysis. Alarmed, Ostrem dashed to the emergency room where a doctor ran a neurological exam that came back normal. Despite her protest that she believes she had GBS, the doctor sent her home. Even after her symptoms worsened and she checked into Overlake Hospital Medical Center in Bellevue, her test results continued to come back as normal. But finally, when she was paralyzed nearly everywhere except for some use of her arms, doctors told her they agreed with her self-diagnosis. Her response to treatment proved they — as well as Ostrem — were right.
Her doctors wondered, though, how she knew of a disorder so rare, it inflicts only 1 in 100,000 per year.
“Well, if you watch too much ‘House,’ you tend to get ideas,” said Ostrem, who, two months after the ordeal, says that her main physical reminder of GBS is fatigue.
Though the TV show, which returns for its sixth season on Sept. 21, is fictional, it’s having a real impact on health care in the United States. Doctors say they're seeing a rise in patients who’ve self-diagnosed a condition they saw on “House.” Unlike Ostrem, few are usually right, doctors say, but that doesn’t stop patients from expecting that physicians will run the complex and costly tests, such as those House routinely runs in the pursuit of a diagnosis. Not only are those tests often unneeded, doctors say, they can drive up the overall cost of health care.
Dr. Scott Morrison, a family physician who writes medical reviews of “House” on his blog, politedissent.com, says more patients are visiting his office to tell him what diseases from "House" they think they have rather than having him just assess their health. One patient insisted she had a copper allergy, like the nun she’d seen in the first season of “House” who was allergic to a copper IUD from her sinful past. (Morrison says none of his patients have correctly diagnosed themselves.)