Extreme Cases

One of the most interesting things about practicing medicine here is that you see a lot of textbook cases. Because most of the patients don't seek care until their disease/infection has progressed to a very severe stage, most of the cases we see, when we look it up in the Merck Manual, are exactly what the textbook describes (if the disease goes untreated). With the two newly arrived med students - zev and jake - we've been looking up many things in the Merck Manual, which is only mildly helpful because the cases are only covered by the last sentence of every entry that starts, "if left untreated..." It is very interesting to see what can happen to the body if nothing is done to help heal it.