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Half Way To A Diagnosis

Posted by inspirationalley at 05:27 AM on January 25, 2008

Some days remain clearly etched in your mind, where you were and what you were doing at a particular moment in time remain with you for ever. Friday April 13th 2007 was just such a day. I received a phone call from the Warwick Justice Centre to say that Eric had collapsed in agony at work and they'd called an ambulance to take him to hospital.

Arriving at the hospital, I had no need to ask where he was, I only had to follow the screams. The doctors were concerned that even with using what they referred to as hefty does of morphine and anti-spasmatic drugs they were still unable to control his pain. However, despite various tests over the following months, they weren't able to establish what was causing the pain despite surmising it was neurological in nature and controlling it, to some extent, with drugs.

After months of waiting Eric eventually had a CT scan in December. This in it self was a story. Various scan appointments had been sent to some made up address that doesn't exist - nobody was able to say why as the address on his medical records is correct. We eventually discovered this when our brilliant postman eventually managed to deliver one of them some months later based only on a name. Having eventually received an appointment Eric arrived at the hospital at the duly appointed time. They asked him to take his top off and sit in the waiting room in a pretty little floral gown which didn't go round him and left him exposed and looking pretty silly. I hate the way in which hospitals do this, especially as it's so unnecessary and would never happen if you were paying privately. The story of what happened once they called him for the scan can only do told second hand, but they couldn't find a vein, so had to call a doctor for help. By the time they'd managed to insert the necessary tubes they'd managed to send his blood shooting all round the room. Eric being the brave soul that he is.....NOT, by this time was in pain and was telling them in no uncertain terms that he would not EVER be having another scan and why wasn't it like they show on the television where you simply lie down and go into a tube!!

Since then, we've sat and waited and waited for the results, because of course it's not important to tell somebody why they are experiencing so much pain. But, eventually on Wednesday, nine months after he collapsed, Eric had half an answer as to what is causing the pain. I say half an answer, because they still aren't sure exactly what is going on and have named two possibilities. It would appear that Eric has a problem with his spine. The scan has shown that he has extensive growths of bone off his spine that are compressing on nerves, hence the pain and the reason for the pain not being in a consistent place. There is also significant inflammation which would explain his tiredness and sweats. The doctor had an accent that was difficult to understand, but, we think he said that it was caused by either Ankylosing Spondylitis or Forestier's Disease. Not being an expert rheumatologist he was unable to give us much information, other than to say that he'd refer the matter back to our GP who he hoped would refer Eric to a Rheumatologist.

Me being me, then wanted to know why we'd previously been told that tests had shown that Eric did not have an autoimmune disorder since it would appear to me that both scenarios being presented to us were in fact just that. Having checked Eric's notes, the Dr said that they'd only checked for a small number of autoimmune disorders that normally affect the chest. That definitely wasn't what was said to us previously.

As I've said before, I'm a real worrier, but I worry about the unknown not the known. Knowing what was causing the pain was a real relief. Yes, neither of these two options are the best news that we could have had, but hey, we're both getting old and have to expect things to go wrong with our bodies. The reassuring aspects of the whole thing is that Eric's now had a number of scans, xrays and tests and they haven't come up with anything life threatening.

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