What disease was the worst you ever experainced?

Kip Heath answered on 4 Jul 2023:

Hard! In 2015 I worked in an Ebola Treatment Centre in Sierra Leone and Ebola is incredibly nasty. But I also worked on the Covid-19 pandemic testing and that was longer and more relentless than Ebola.

Hannah Scholes answered on 4 Jul 2023:

That’s a really difficult question. I would probably say Covid, especially at the beginning when nobody was 100% sure what we were dealing with, although it’s much better now. The workload coming through the labs was relentless!

Cheryl Williams answered on 4 Jul 2023:

Covid was difficult, in terms of the scale at which we had to ramp up testing in order to meet demand, as well as having to support a service whilst having staff off sick or isolating, and managing childcare and family issues. The team had to adapt to completely new ways of working, including night shifts. I look back now and feel fortunate and also privileged and proud of the part I played in supporting the service during the COVID pandemic, although I also hope that we do not experience a pandemic of the same magnitude in my lifetime.

Bruno Silvester Lopes answered on 5 Jul 2023:

I had a severe infection caused by a bacterium named Staphylococcus aureus (it looks like small bunch of grapes under a microscope) in one of my finger. The infection was growing as the day passed and I was in a lot of pain. Finally, I managed to go to the doctor who gave me some antibiotics and I was well once again. I remember this experience very clearly as I was a student at that time in Edinburgh doing my PhD and was working on antibiotics and how they are used to treat infections.

Sophie Shaw answered on 5 Jul 2023:

Our department helps patients with genetic diseases, and sometimes this can be very young babies who are very ill and in intensive care. They will often have a very rare genetic disease that only affects a very small number of people across the entire world. It can be challenging to work on these cases, as in some cases these babies may pass away at a very young age due to how poorly they are.

Chigozie Onuba answered on 5 Jul 2023:

We deal with alot of complex healthcare conditions. Cases includes; blood cancers, parasitic infections, autoimmune haemolytic anaemia’s, myeloma etc

Edward Guy answered on 5 Jul 2023:

Diseases can be thought of in terms of ‘what causethe worst symptoms’, but also ‘what has the worst impact on lives’. I think some of the toughest cases for me have been congenital infectious diseases. Not only can these cause severe or life-threatening symptoms for unborn children, but the mother sometimes carries huge guilt that she was the one who contracted the infection in the first place and passed it onto her child, even though there is nothing she could have done to prevent it.

Clare Morrow answered on 5 Jul 2023:

Personally – 4 years ago i was ill – the doctor told me it was pulled rib muscle – but as i was not improving i went to A&E and had a scan. This showed i had a hole in my stomach and sepsis (bacterial infection) and was in hospital for 8 days and off work for 3 months.

Working in the pathology we see lots of blood samples that show the patient is very poorly with infections or cancers.

Abi Attwell answered on 6 Jul 2023:

I think a really hard disease we see in our job quite often is Motor Neurone Disease as it is a disease that seems to start out of the blue and is degenerative (gets worse) and can get worse quite quickly, so it can be sad to watch loved ones go through that.

Dan Brunsdon answered on 10 Jul 2023:

My answer changes depending on who we mean by having the worst experience. From a patient view I would agree with Kip and say Ebola in particular is a less than super great to get. When I was working in Sierra Leone with Lassa fever survivors you often could see first hand how the two outbreaks had impacted so much on people’s lives. Personally though I would say Covid was the worst that I’ve experienced, not so much from the medical side but going through lockdowns and social isolation for so long was particularly tough for me.

Simon Anderson answered on 12 Jul 2023:

I’m going to agree with the Covid crowd on this, fortunately it didn’t affect me massively on the occasions on got it but the devastation it caused was mind bending even now. I was in Hong Kong when it was just starting in China and never thought it would turn the world up like it did. It changed so much but was, and continues, to show the incredible things people can do, what science can do. Ask me when I started and I would never have thought I would have been involved in setting up a drive through heart monitor service so that we could continue to help those that still needed help.

Question: What disease was the worst you ever experainced?

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