16 5.1.22 Photo illustration by Ina Jang
Diagnosis By Lisa Sanders, M.D.
The woman’s phone pinged, and she
glanced down to see the message: ‘‘The
bulge is bigger,’’ read the text, ‘‘and
it hurts.’’ She hurried upstairs to her
22-year-old daughter’s room. On the
young woman’s left hip was a patch of
pink about the size of a golf ball. Just
below her prominent hip bone where
the skin should have dipped inward, it
now bulged a little outward.
She had been on and off antibiotics
for an infection that fi rst showed up on
her lower belly a month earlier. When
that happened, they went to see Dr. Rob-
ert Figura, the young woman’s primary-
care doctor. It was October 2020, and
they were in Glenview, Ill., a Chicago
suburb. Covid-19 was rampant in the city
and throughout the state; just going to
the doctor’s offi ce had become a terrify-
ing act of last resort. But this red bulge
was also pretty scary. Figura ordered a
CT scan, which showed an infection in
the young woman’s pelvis and abdom-
inal wall. She took two antibiotics for
two weeks, and it seemed to clear up.
The redness, the swelling and eventually
even the pain disappeared.
But not for long. A few days earlier,
her left hip began to hurt. Figura started
her on a diff erent antibiotic, but it didn’t
help. Then the bulge reappeared and
kept growing. When it got to be the size
of a tennis ball, Figura agreed — it was
time to go to the hospital.↓
Recounting a Truly Awful Year
It was late afternoon by the time the
women reached Northshore Univer-
sity Hospital in Evanston. The mother
wrapped a supporting arm around her
much taller daughter’s waist as they
entered the facility.
The emergency-room doctor looked
through the young woman’s medical
records before going in to see her. She
had a fever of nearly 103 degrees and
what looked like a pretty straightfor-
ward skin infection, but the quick review
of her records revealed a more compli-
cated story. She had just been treated
for an infection. One month earlier she
was treated for an infection around her
fallopian tubes that extended into her
abdominal wall. Now she appeared to
have another infection.
But even beyond that, she wasn’t the
normal healthy athlete she appeared toShe was a -year-old athlete who
had rarely been sick. Now she
had a series of infections that no
one seemed able to fi gure out.