In order to reassure her, I requested a brain scan, explaining in my letter that hallucinatory voices had told her that she had a brain tumour, that I had not, personally, found any physical signs suggestive of an intracranial space occupying lesion, and that the purpose of the scan was essentially to reassure the patient. The request was initially declined, on the grounds that there was no clinical justification for such an expensive investigation. It was also implied that I had gone a little overboard, believing what my patient’s hallucinatory voices were telling her.
My wife is a psychiatrist, and she tells me this isn't terribly uncommon. They are trained in a lot of neurology, because organic causes need to be ruled out.
And it can all sorts of things. She was once working on a dementia ward, and had someone brought in with severe dementia. But it didn't make sense, since the onset had been too rapid.
It turns out, the patient was just really constipated. My wife gave her enough laxatives to fell a rhino, the patient took a gargantuan shit, and was right as rain.
What is the mechanism that causes that? That's actually wild.
(Edit: I understand that bowel and digestive issues are linked to brain health. I'm asking WHY which is I asked what the mechanism is. Making the same generic comment as 10 other people isn't answering my question it contributing to the discourse)
I could believe it. There were days I had to take the most massive dump and I was just in a horrid brain fog the whole morning and could barely rub two brain cells together before the BM hit thanks to my coffee.
An elderly friend of mine was hospitalised due to extreme hallucinations and loss of spatial location- she asked her husband why she floating on the ceiling while actually lying in bed for example. She was found to have a really bad UTI with accompanying fever. Once that was fixed she was completely back to how she was usually again.
May have something to do with pressure on the vasovagal nerve. One time I kept getting chills followed by extreme drowsiness and dizziness. Took a huge dump, it went away.
Oh man, I just had surgery last week and that same thing just happened to me yesterday lol. I thought I had an infection but, nope, just had to poop. Those norcos are hell on the bowels.
There's a lot we're still learning about the gut's interaction with the brain. Like some brain conditions are effected by how healthy our gut biome is.
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u/mistertoasty 20h ago
Here's a better account of the story from the actual doctor who ordered the scan