This looks like an instance of the Dunning-Kruger effect to me. Despite your own previous failures in diagnosis, you still felt competent to give medical advice to a stranger in a potentially life-threatening situation.
In this case, the "right answer" is not an analysis of the reliability of your friend's account, it is "get a second opinion, stat". This is especially true seeing as how you believed the description you gave above.
If a paramedic tells me "it's nothing", I complain to his or her superiors, because that is not a ... (read more)
This looks like an instance of the Dunning-Kruger effect to me. Despite your own previous failures in diagnosis, you still felt competent to give medical advice to a stranger in a potentially life-threatening situation.
In this case, the "right answer" is not an analysis of the reliability of your friend's account, it is "get a second opinion, stat". This is especially true seeing as how you believed the description you gave above.
If a paramedic tells me "it's nothing", I complain to his or her superiors, because that is not a ... (read more)