Lisa Sanders is on the case

Chris Cassidy

Lisa Sanders ’97MD, pictured in a Yale New Haven Hospital examining room, directs the Yale Long COVID Multidisciplinary Care Center, but she may be better known as author of the New York Times Magazine “Diagnosis” column. View full image

Lisa Sanders ’97MD is medical director of the Yale Long COVID Multidisciplinary Care Center. But chances are you are more familiar with her New York Times Magazine column, “Diagnosis,” which presents vexing medical cases as mysteries to be solved. This format inspired the eight-hour Netflix docuseries Diagnosis, on which Sanders collaborated, as well as the TV show House starring Hugh Laurie. She has also written two weight-loss books. Before coming to med school at Yale, Sanders spent ten years in TV at Good Morning America and CBS News, winning an Emmy.

Lenore Skenazy: What made you switch from TV news to medicine?

Lisa Sanders: I was covering medicine with Dr. Bob Arnot. We were doing a documentary called 48 Hours on Crack Street. It eventually became the CBS show 48 Hours, but this was the first. Crack was causing a lot of mayhem so our job was to spend 48 hours at [New York City’s] Metropolitan Hospital. At about 3 in the morning, this guy ran up and said, “Are you a doctor?” Bob said yes. The guy said, “Can you come with me? My friend was having chest pain and he collapsed and I can’t wake him.” The guy was face down in the grass. Bob felt his carotids and didn’t feel anything. So he rolled him over and gave him what is known as a precordial thump, right into the guy’s chest. And he woke up. Went from dead to alive. And I thought, “TV’s interesting, but chances are I will not save anybody’s life.”

Skenazy: You must’ve been a lot older than the other Yale med students.  

Sanders: Well, I say this in jest, but I think it’s true: Yale admits 100 students a year, and I think they save 10 spots for the weirdos. I was one of the weirdos.

Skenazy: And the others?

Sanders: There was an architect, a professional baseball player, and a guy from Wall Street who’s mentioned very prominently in Liar’s Poker.

Skenazy: Who says there are no second acts in American lives? Speaking of which: how did you go from doctor to doctor AND New York Times columnist?

Sanders: The way that medicine is taught, doctors talk about medically unexplained symptoms all the time. But people outside medicine didn’t see the uncertainty. That really stuck with me. I’d thought diagnosis was like the multiplication tables: “4 x 6 is always 24.” So “A fever and a rash is always going to be X.”

Skenazy: But when a guy comes with palm blisters or the taste of metal in his mouth . . .  

Sanders: Our job was to figure out what was going on, or what the next step should be. And I was like, “Oh my God, this is like a little detective story!” I couldn’t wait to go home and tell my husband. I was infatuated with this part of medicine!

Skenazy: So you start writing up these cases in the Times and along comes Hugh Laurie, who I hope is reading this because I love him?

Sanders: A producer called me and said, “I have a television show you might be interested in. It’s about a doctor who is arrogant and irritable and addicted to drugs, who hates patients but loves diagnosis.” And I didn’t say anything but I thought, “Who would watch such a show?” He didn’t tell me right away that it was based on my column, but as soon as I saw it . . .

Skenazy: You diagnosed the origin! So you give the show new disease ideas for each episode?

Sanders: I’d give them some symptoms and send some information about it and what it could be mistaken for.

Skenazy: And now you’re dealing with a whole new set of symptoms from Long COVID.

Sanders: Post-infectious syndromes, which have been with us since the beginning of time, have never really gotten the attention they deserve.

Skenazy: What has being at the center of this strange disease taught you?

Sanders: That you have to believe what people say. When you’re confronted with something you don’t recognize, your desire to write it off as somebody who is bad at explaining their symptoms is overwhelming.