My neurologist is a friend. We've worked together well for years, and I've helped him give countless neuro exams to other people. So it was more than a little weird to be on the other end of his safety pin today. I was hoping, I suppose, that he would tell me that the long list of things I had typed out for him were all being imagined, and I was fine. But the corner of his mouth kept pulling back, and he stifled the "humph" noise he makes on several occasions. The noise means, "That's not good." When he checked my eyes in the dark it came out, and his shoulders sagged. I forgot to tell him I had recently been diagnosed with sleep apnea; it came up in some papers that his staff had printed from my recent labs, etc. He was extremely startled that I had forgotten such a thing. Honestly, I was not that surprised; there's just so much.
I actually passed several parts of the exam that I thought I'd fail, but it took me a looong time to remember the list of three words he assigned me.
He is testing me for lupus, MS, and myasthenia gravis for now. He had trouble meeting my eyes when he was telling me the plan, and trouble thinking of anything positive to say. That's unusual for him. But he's also checking for thyroid and B12, which no one has done lately. So there is that, anyway.
I got my hair cut and put in a call to the woman I had planned to do clinicals with starting in about two weeks. If my magical thinking had gotten my ailments pooh-poohed, I was going to try to go on and do them. Now I am finally going to tell her I will have to put them off.
Awkward.
The Science Behind Trump’s Courtroom Snoozing
21 minutes ago
You posted this April 1 - it's not an April Fool's joke? Hmm. When do you find out?
ReplyDeleteWouldn't joke about it. Having an EEG Tuesday and an MRI in a week and a half. Had the myasthenia gravis panel and other blood work done Thurs.
ReplyDeleteAt the pig roast last Saturday, I met a woman about my age who had had the same hip replaced twice. The first time she had such a bad reaction to the metal that they had to take it out and do another one. Now she has a cane, and has the pains and color changes in the hip replacement let - RSD? She is a nurse too- does home health. She didn't know what RSD was - is that the right acronym?
ReplyDeleteSince medical testing is only done on males, looks like to me that women are having some kind of reaction to the metals or other materials in the replacement devices.
I think the RSD is from having the Morton's neuroma cut out. I don't have bad symptoms on the left and I have bilateral replacements. But I do wonder about the Prolene mesh they used in the hernia repair, it started hurting about a year after the surgery and now that I'm getting my gut to calm down, pain-wise, it's the only place in there that consistently hurts. But I probably do have too large a body load of prosthetics for someone who is sometimes allergic to water.
ReplyDeleteA lot of men have reactions to those metal hips too; it's a surgical technique flaw. The hip is not put in properly and shaves tiny, like molecular, flakes into the patient and the pieces are small enough to cause a reaction. She could easily have gotten RSD from the inflammation from the first hip. Bless her heart.
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