Bedridden for 11 Years, Man Proves the Experts Wrong By Inventing a Surgery to Cure Himself
- MO Greatness
- Jul 7, 2020
- 4 min read
By: Jennifer Zolper - Aug 31, 2019
Doug Lindsay had just entered his senior year at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri when he came home from his first day of class only to be plunged into a real-life “final project” that took him 13 years to finish.
The assignment: to find the origin and cure for a mysterious condition that had plagued the bodies of his family for generations, and now was targeting his own.
He was only 21 that day when the room began to spin around him and he collapsed onto the dining room table in 1999.
As a biology major, Lindsay had seen himself becoming a biochemistry professor—or maybe even a writer for “The Simpsons.” He was a former high school track athlete, and he was poised to finish the year and earn his degree.
However, Doug admitted to always wondering if the debilitating condition that sidelined his mother and aunt in their early adult years would eventually affect him, too. “When I called my mom that night to tell her I needed to drop out (of college), we both knew,” he told CNN.
His mother had gotten weaker until she couldn’t pick him up when he was just 18 months old. By the time her son was four, she couldn’t walk. She lived on for decades, but she was too frail to do much beyond submitting to years of tests that never confirmed any condition.
As his ability to stand and walk worsened, he realized that physicians and specialists were no more enlightened than when they’d tested his mother and aunt (who was also sidelined by the mystery condition). When one puzzled doctor finally told Doug that he should see a psychiatrist, he knew he would have to unravel the family “curse” on his own.
He worked through the clues in his living room from the hospital bed where he stayed 22 hours a day. He began by pouring over medical books he’d collected, and then recalled a 2,200-page endocrinology textbook he’d picked up next to a trashcan on campus. At the time, he was hoping it would hold the secret to what was wrong with his mother. As he read through the book a second time, a passage captured his attention and gave him an idea.
Doug’s mother suspected her weakness was related to her thyroid somehow, but this book suggested adrenal gland problems can share the same symptoms with thyroid issues. He then formed a bold hypothesis—that there existed an entire class of diseases of the nervous system still undiscovered by medicine.
He knew he needed to find a courageous doctor interested in pursuing new discoveries. He found that partner in Dr. H. Cecil Coghlan, a medical professor at the University of Alabama–Birmingham.
Coghlan thought the young student might be onto something—so he helped Doug begin an IV protocol of noradrenalin to counter any excessive adrenalin his glands might be producing. The drug, usually prescribed to critically ill patients to raise blood pressure, worked enough to get him walking again for short periods around the house—and he was hooked up to the bag of liquid continually for six years.
But why was his body producing so much adrenaline in the first place? Dr. Coghlan proposed an adrenal tumor might be the culprit, but three scans all came up negative. Undeterred, Doug pored through the literature and came to believe that something else could be acting like a tumor, causing his glands to misbehave.
In 2006, a fourth scan showed his adrenals glowing brightly. Coghlan called Lindsay and said, “We found it!”
Bilateral adrenal medullary hyperplasia was the diagnosis. The medulla is the interior region of the adrenal gland, and it had grown enlarged acting like a tumor, proving Lindsay’s hunch.
As experts in the field were still doubtful, Dr. Coghlan realized they were in uncharted territory—only 32 cases of the diagnosis were ever recorded, and there was no record of any surgeries done on humans to correct it.
But, there were studies done on dogs, cats and mice. These described the process as similar to slicing the end of the adrenal gland and squeezing until the medulla popped out like a pimple. With only this animal evidence and vague descriptions of the surgery, Lindsay created a 363-page PDF, detailing what the first human adrenal medullectomy would look like.
Shopping for a surgeon proved difficult. It took 18 months, but Doug eventually found a surgeon—from the same university in Birmingham—who was willing to put their medical license on the line for an untested procedure, and in September 2010, the doctor extracted one of Lindsay’s medullas.
The surgery was a success. Three weeks later, Lindsay could sit up for three hours—and by the end of three months, on Christmas eve, he walked a mile to attend church. He remained standing at the back for midnight Mass with so much to be thankful for.
The second medulla was excised in 2012 at Washington University in St. Louis, completing the procedure that Lindsay had invented at home on his computer.
By 2014 Doug was coming off some of his medications and traveling in an airplane. Dr. Coghlan passed away the following year, after witnessing the jubilant result of his service to, and radical belief in, Doug Lindsay’s ideas.
Doug discovered his professional calling, too: far from The Simpsons’ set, the innovator is now a medical consultant for rare diseases.
“I can travel and give speeches and go for walks…And, I can try to change the world.”
We think he already has!
(WATCHLindsay’s TEDx Talk below)
Comments