A gardener is tormented by dizziness, inflammation and diarrhea. It was only after years that experts found the cause of the problems: his hobby.
Recorded by Anika Geisler
This text comes from the stern archive and first appeared online in September 2020. On the occasion of Rare Disease Day on February 29th, we are publishing it again.
I didn’t get to know the patient personally at first. But I soon knew his medical history pretty well: The gardener had come to the Center for Unrecognized and Rare Diseases at the Marburg University Hospital because he had been having various symptoms for a long time and no doctor could find the cause. The first complaints began five years earlier. Suddenly the tall, athletic man felt bad, and new symptoms arose: dizziness, weakness, rash, bloody diarrhea, inflammation in the lymph nodes, salivary glands, jaw and intestines. Sometimes the 40-year-old suddenly collapsed. He gradually lost 48 kilos of weight.