Tedious Jobs
So now all the excitement is over for now it's back to CLIPPERS. Twelve months ago I was being admitted for investigation at the NHNN with diplopia, ataxia and numb feelings in my hands, arms and feet. Today I spent four hours cleaning the conservatory roof balancing precariously on a step-ladder. This time last year minus a week or so I remember walking up to the local bank and finding it hard to stay on the pavement (it wasn't a narrow pavement). Cleaning the conservatory roof up a ladder definitely wasn't an option then but not being able to see or walk properly now seems a long-time ago. However, I remain vigilant as there's always the chance the symptoms might come back and if they do I want to catch them early.
For now though still not much to report. I'm still doing fine on Azathioprine and not expecting the regime to be changed (unless my blood test next week shows anything dubious).
Cutting Edge Questions
In research-land Drs Keegan and Pittock recently had a short editorial published entitled "Cutting-edge Questions About CLIPPERS". As many of you probably know, Keegan and Pittock were involved in the first scientific papers to recognise and name CLIPPERS as a distinct syndrome. In this short article they advise caution in diagnosing CLIPPERS as the newly reported cases seem to be diverging in their appearance compared with some of the early cases. They also note that even brain biopsy does not give a definitive diagnosis but just excludes other conditions. They urge further work to provide firm diagnostic criteria and monitoring of existing patients so that recurrence can be rapidly treated. All sounds very sensible. I suspect we'll know a lot more in a year or two especially if the rate of diagnosis continues to rise.
Living With CLIPPERS by Bill Crum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
