Transcript
Nancy Johnson
Welcome to CAP News. I'm Nancy Johnson with the College of American Pathologists. It's Monday, November 2nd. For much of her life, Dr. La'Tonzia Adams struggled with her weight, trying diets, exercise, and eventually undergoing weight loss surgery. But something still didn't make sense. The irony is that Dr. Adams is a pathologist, a physician who diagnoses disease. Yet for more than two decades, she didn't have a diagnosis for what was happening in her own body.
Nancy Johnson
Dr. La'Tonzia Adams can trace the signs back years. Despite being a healthy weight as a little girl, she began putting on extra pounds when she hit puberty. And as she got older, she was in pain and it became difficult to ignore.
Dr. La'Tonzia Adams
I was noticing that despite any efforts, it was very hard to lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off. I was also noticing an increase in leg pain, leg heaviness. And towards closer to my diagnosis, I started experiencing a lot of bruising. My legs would feel hot, and to detect, I would describe myself feeling like my legs were on fire wrapped in barbed wire.
Nancy Johnson
But Dr. Adams didn't know what she had. After countless diets, fasting, and exercise regimens, she underwent gastric sleeve surgery. A couple years later, she lost about 70 pounds. Still, there were changes that weight loss couldn't explain, including large lobes of tissue developing around her knees and multiple painful nodules in her legs and arms. Her gynecologist noticed them and recommended she see a vascular specialist. More than 20 years after her journey began, she had a diagnosis of lipedema, a chronic condition involving an abnormal buildup of fat, usually in the legs.
Dr. La'Tonzia Adams
I was elated in that I finally had an answer. But I was also angry because, you know, I was kind of like led down this path that something was wrong with me, you know, I just didn't have the willpower. I wasn't doing enough. I wasn't pushing hard enough.
Nancy Johnson
After the diagnosis, Dr. Adams underwent liposuction surgery, removing 34 pounds from her thighs and lower legs.
Liposuction Physician
So this patient has lipedema. This patient actually has a stage four lipedema. She's actually got some lymphedema.
Nancy Johnson
Part of the problem is that lipedema can resemble other conditions, including obesity and lymphedema. And there's no single laboratory test to identify it.
Dr. La'Tonzia Adams
If there was a blood test or some type of standardized criteria that can concretely state that this is it, that would be very huge. One, it would cut down the time of being having symptoms to diagnosis. It would help quality of life because even though we don't want to have a diagnosis of some sort, when I got my diagnosis, it was very validating that I wasn't going crazy.
Nancy Johnson
As a clinical pathologist and medical director for microbiology and molecular microchemistry, Dr. Adams brings her personal experience with her into the lab. After spending years searching for her own diagnosis, she understands better than most what it means to be the patient waiting for an answer.
Dr. La'Tonzia Adams
Being the patient, but then when I see someone on the other side and making that diagnosis, it's helpful, but it also transcends beyond lipedema. It transcends to all other conditions that I see as a pathologist and providing that is knowing that there's someone on that other side and that answer I give them will make a huge difference in their life.
Nancy Johnson
Looking ahead, the Lipedema Foundation reports that researchers are studying genetics, imaging, and other biological clues that could lead to better ways of identifying lipedema. For patients like Dr. Adams, the goal is a shorter road to a more certain diagnosis. That does it for this episode of CAP News. Share this newscast with your social media network. And if you're watching this video on YouTube, hit the like button and leave us a comment. And if you've got a story we should be covering, write to us at stories at CAP.org. We're back tomorrow at 5 AM Eastern for another episode of our newscast. I'm Nancy Johnson. Have a great day.