Friending Facebook

Emil Protalinski
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Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy’s life

By | March 7, 2011, 2:47pm PST

Summary: A 4-year-old boy was diagnosed with leukemia after his father posted an image of his rash on Facebook. He is now going through a three-year-course of chemotherapy.

4-year-old Ted Rice was diagnosed with leukemia after his father, Philip Rice, uploaded a photo of him to Facebook. Dr. Sara Barton, a family friend, saw the image, recognized the young boy’s rash as a symptom of acute lymphocytic leukemia, and informed Philip that should take his son to the hospital immediately.

“I had a gut feeling something was wrong so I posted the pic,” Philip, an anesthetic assistant, told The Sun. “That photo probably saved us.”

Ted is currently going through a three-year-course of chemotherapy. Philip and his wife Sarah were told their son now has a 75 percent chance of surviving.

Last month, I reported on a similar story: Surgeon gives life-saving diagnosis, via Facebook. 30-year-old Rahul Velineni saw posts from his former schoolmate, 30-year-old Peter Ball, complaining to his friends about a sharp pain in his stomach. Velineni diagnosed it as appendicitis and told Ball to get to a hospital as soon as possible, saving his life.

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Topics

Facebook, Hospital, Photograph, Healthcare, Emil Protalinski

Emil Protalinski has covered the tech industry for five years for multiple publications.

Disclosure

Emil Protalinski

Emil has nothing to disclose.

Biography

Emil Protalinski

Emil Protalinski has covered the tech industry for five years for multiple publications, including Neowin for two years and Ars Technica for three years. He has written 1,000s of articles for both, with a particular focus on scrutinizing Microsoft products and services. Recently, Emil has expanded his coverage to non-Microsoft technologies, including the social networking giant Facebook.

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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
FAULKNE 13th Oct
Good day to confirm this comment I would appreciate T h e b e s t o f Z D N e t d e l i v e r e d your website very nice to everyone Yes, Oracle is the only one with shared-disk architecture, but that is there advantage. It means you can add or remove nodes and the database lives on. In a shared nothing architecture, if you lose a node, you lose the system. I'm sure Oracle appreciates EMC highlighting their advantage.I also desire to signal in your RSS feeds. Thank you as soon as once again and maintain up the great operate Awesome post! Thank you very much || thanks for nice content this is really benefit to me.
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Again, giving credit to the medium not the person
wackoae 7th Mar 2011
Do you own stocks in Facebook and are trying to hype the value?
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Contributr
RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
Empro Updated - 7th Mar 2011
@wackoae
Facebook isn't a public company. You can't own stocks in Facebook (yet).
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But still this has nothing to do with FaceBook, since the boy would be ...
DeRSSS 8th Mar 2011
@Empro: ... brought to the doctor and diagnosed properly anyway.

If the child would leave in some obscure country, in territory with no or almost no doctors -- but all of sudden his father would have computer and internet access -- then this story would have merit.
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
Pete "athynz" Athens 8th Mar 2011
@wackoae I think this was done to try to offset the bad press all the facebook/ social networking haters give FB... saying FB is responsible for friends not speaking to each other, marriages failing, the Anti-Christ, Armageddon...

And it's like I keep on saying to all the FB haters it's nothing more than a communications tool.
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
vaughanm 8th Mar 2011
@athynz Facebook is owned by the CIA. Its just a massive database of peoples personal info that people willingly give to the CIA
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpLNlSKugHw
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
dimonic 8th Mar 2011
If your statement was comprehensible, then it too might have merit.
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
boomchuck1 8th Mar 2011
If the parents thought there was something wrong they should have taken the boy to the doctor rather than posting on FB.
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Trusting the Internet for Medical Advice?
MichP 8th Mar 2011
Yes, thank you! How much time was wasted waiting around until the right friend logged in and happened to see the picture? What if the doctor missed that post and someone else had told them that looked like ____ and home remedy ____ would take care of that?
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
spin498 8th Mar 2011
@MichP and of course, it's incomprehensible that maybe dad was chatting to friend dr. mentioned snot nose had a rash and dr. said, really take a pic and post it for me. Couldn't possibly have happened like that. So based on a condensed story you're going to hang dad out on a line?
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".. an anesthetic assistant, told The Sun"
magallanes 8th Mar 2011
The Sun, ok it explain everything.

Next, i married facebook (National E.)
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Don't shoot the messenger...
philb1701 8th Mar 2011
Rather then complain about the merits of HOW these life-saving occurrences happened, can't we instead celebrate the fact that they DID happen? Have we become so cynical that we have to look for what SHOULD have happened instead of relishing what DID?
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
Steel73 8th Mar 2011
@philb1701 Thank you! Rather than be more interested in being a facebook hater, relish that fact that something good came out of this! They way you people talk it sounds like you would rather the kid die than admit something actually good happened by using facebook.
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
ThereThere 8th Mar 2011
what a crock of bs
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
neput Updated - 8th Mar 2011
You can't blame Facebook for the stupidity of some of the people who use it. Its a tool, like any other program! If they weren't being stupid there, they would be stupid somewhere else.
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
I Hate Malware 8th Mar 2011
@neput and you have to admit, it is much more amusing in a public arena silly
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
neilpost Updated - 9th Mar 2011
I'm sure innane Facebook chit-chat has been responsible for a number of people not paying attention whilst checking their Facebook Mobile App and subsequently crashing their car, or getting run over by the proverbial bus.

So 1 step forward, 5 steps back IMHO

Perhaps snopes.com wants to cast an eye over this bollocks story too.

Agree with the above poster, that the wholly irresponsible parents should have taken their child to the doctor, and not relied on Dr Internet, where everything gives you cancer.
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
WindowWasher 9th Mar 2011
How stupid. You're sick or unsure of a problem you go to the doctor or the ER. You don't post it on Facebook and wait for answers? What's wrong with people?
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
neilpost Updated - 10th Mar 2011
@WindowWasher
Perhaps they were too busy on Farmville, to get off their fat arses and take the kid to the Doctors
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
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RE: Facebook photo results in leukemia diagnosis, saving boy's life
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