Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Vestus from Gimlet.

When we first started hearing about the new coronavirus, we were told to be on the lookout

for a few specific symptoms, coughing, fever, shortness of breath.

But as the virus has crept around the world, strange stories started appearing about people

getting these really weird symptoms.

Like this doctor told us about a patient showing up to an ER in Michigan, back in March.

With the chief complaint of bloody diarrhea, so blood in her stool.

Without getting, you know, too gross for us to breathe.

This is my wheelhouse though.

This is Dr. Anthony de Benedett, he's a gastroenterologist in Michigan.

So Anthony's patient was a woman in her 70s who had just gotten back from a vacation to

Egypt.

She'd done a cruise down the Nile.

And when Anthony heard about her tummy troubles, his mind didn't go to the new coronavirus.

She had no fever and no respiratory symptoms at all.

So she didn't immediately raise any major red flags.

We thought that it was what's commonly referred to as travelers' diarrhea.

So to find out what bug she had, he sent off what's called a bio-fire stool test.

It's the coolest of the stool tests.

Which essentially tests for every known GI infection.

And that had come back negative.

Meanwhile, Anthony found out that someone on her tour group tested positive for the coronavirus.

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