Neuro, Skeletal

Morning spent cavorting around apartment in new dress, making some last-minute changes to blips before 5-day grace period of editing passes. Afternoon spent walking in ridiculous, out-of-nowhere heat to neurologists', spending several hours there, getting to sit in on doctor's consultation and ask some clarifying questions, provide additional details when the actual patient struggled with divulging or remembering finer points, then walking back in the swelter, changing into more weather-appropriate attire, and heading out for the first meal of the day, early dinner.

Bad choice of restaurant, though. We always say we won't go back to Cheesecake Factory, and then a few months pass, and we start to forget the extent of our reasons not to return. Hours later, I still feel sick from feasting on otherwise delicious food. So if we ever do go back, it will have to be a light, shared lunch, nothing more. Or maybe just drinks. Or maybe just a splurge on dessert. Split up the insanity, at least.

I also went back to Macy's in the evening to check on a third dress, but I'm going to have to go for the fourth straight day tomorrow because today's visit produced no information, as the dress could not be located in the back. Uy. This is not good. The more time I spend there, the more I want to buy all the dresses. Oof.

Today's image brought to you by the exam room at the neurologists'
-- For the first time in more than a year, a doctor sat down with the patient in question and talked through his entire medical history, actually bothering to take the time to get the big picture so as to inform the decision to confirm the diagnosis. Five months from November, and we finally get to hear the lumbar puncture and MRI results explained, by a different, new doctor. Goodness!

Toward the end of the visit, which felt like an eternity that must have pushed back so many other patients' appointments that afternoon, she kindly took the time to take us into her office to view the MRI results. We'd looked at the resulting images on a cd copy, and we hadn't seen anything that stood out as abnormal, as a potential lesion. For whatever reason, her versions of the images were much more informative. The lesions were very obvious, at least in the imaging in the brain, less so in the two spinal sections imaged in February, and this massive, prominent lesion on the left side of the brain very clearly explains the predominant right-side issues. Our doubts about the diagnosis have been dissipated. But why on earth did it take five months to have such a fruitful session? Oh yeah, the medicine isn't working like it should so the affected party finally got sent along to the MS specialist at the office. Despite the confirmed diagnosis, that medicine hiccup (and then some) is still a problem, because if further imaging shows new lesions (rather than just flare-ups of existing lesions), that will mean the medicine really isn't having an effect on Mr. Patient. And then the options start to turn toward these scarier drugs with really overwhelming potential side-effects, such as increased cancer-risk and decreased effectiveness of the already beleaguered immune system in fighting off infection. Dandy.

Nevertheless, I affirm today a terrific and terrifically informative, surprisingly reassuring day. Things could be so much worse, but they're not. The heat, having skipped from cold, grey days and over any kind of in-between, is still the first real burst of warmer season weather. So much to savor on the bright side.