‘I thought she had a full bladder’: Doctor’s unusual abdominal finding leads to rare cancer diagnosis
Dr Robert Schmidli initially suspected a thyroidectomy gone wrong.
In 2004, Dr Robert Schmidli was in his first year as a staff specialist at Canberra Hospital when he uncovered a patient’s rare ovarian tumour.
His 65-year-old patient had postoperative hypocalcaemia and had been taking levothyroxine following a thyroidectomy in 1989.
“Her GP called me because her T3 level had gone up and rang me several times about reducing her thyroxine dose,” the endocrinologist told AusDoc.
Having stopped the medication two months prior, the patient presented with tremor, heat intolerance and weight loss but was otherwise well, he recalled.
