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| A squawk |
My CLIPPERS 2011 ended with more of a whimper - or at least a squawk - than a bang. On Monday I was booked in at the Day Care Unit at NHNN for an MRI and a meeting with my consultant. On the previous Friday the MRI appointment was pulled forward so I had to be at the unit for 8:45AM. This meant leaving the house earlier than I normally do to get to work! On the first day of my Christmas holiday!! I shouldn't moan too much though - comprehensive monitoring is a good thing.
Anyway, everything went smoothly - at first at least. There were no travel disasters and the MRI proceeded on time as planned. The scan seemed to be the standard set with a contrast injection half-way through. For a bit of variety I was scanned in a new scanner I hadn't been to before. The experience was largely the same but there was an inch or two more clearance when lying inside the magnet which actually makes quite a difference to the feeling of being entombed.
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| A comfy chair |
After returning to the Day Care Unit and sitting in my assigned Comfy Chair I waited to hear if there were any more surprise investigations and, failing that, for my consultant to arrive. After about 45 minutes I was told that there were no more investigations but that there had been a mix up as my consultant was away for the week so I could go home. As I wasn't waiting around for too long and as the MRI was done bang on time this wasn't too annoying so off I went.
What was slightly more annoying was getting a call back from the unit in the afternoon asking if I could come in the next day to review my scan. To cut a long story short I said I was happy to do it by phone but unless there was anything urgent to discuss would leave it until next year. I had already arranged to go in for a day on short notice (which was fine) but wasn't too happy about another unplanned £20 rail ticket and day trip to London. It turned out there had been some misunderstanding between the various departments. Anyway these things happen sometimes and fortunately a telephone consultation sufficed this time - further MRI and follow-up appointment in February 2012 and Azathioprine to be ramped up to 100mg twice a day in about two and a half weeks.
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| What will happen to me if while on cortico-steroids I eat too much over Christmas. |
Hopefully that's it for this year. A couple more routine blood tests and keep taking the tablets and we'll see what happens in 2012. What's the long term plan? It would be nice for CLIPPERS to quietly fade away but failing that I presume that once I am established at a maintenance dose of Azathioprine my medical team will want to try reducing the Prednisolone. That's if nothing else happens. For now at least Christmas pudding and malt whisky are higher on the agenda.
Thanks to everyone who has supported me in 2011 throughout this strange neurological adventure.
Happy Holidays!
Read other articles in this series at Living With CLIPPERS.
Living With CLIPPERS by Bill Crum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
