Ancestors

Written by Quad on 2025-01-17 at 18:33

if you do a lumbar puncture, and two days later you get called directly by the neurology department's senior physician using his personal phone, asking if you can come by the hospital as soon as possible, and that you might want to pack some extra clothes, is that a bad sign?

i'm uh... asking for a friend

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Written by Quad on 2025-01-17 at 18:35

on a definitely unrelated note, i might be unavailable a while, starting 07:00 on monday

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Toot

Written by Quad on 2025-01-17 at 19:15

I've mentioned it like two or three times on fedi, but multiple people seem to be curious so I'll dump the history so far here instead of walking through the same long story in like 6 separate threads:

Symptoms started December 2023 and I've been on sick leave since May 2024, while doing fysiotherapy three times a week since June. Whatever it is my neck hurts (never feels like it's in the "correct" position, like it should "pop" and loosen if I move it in a particular way, but it never does) and the muscles around my neck and shoulders are overly stiff 24/7 for seemingly no reason.

For starters I made the classic mistake of saying "eh, i'm lazying around during christmas, it'll probably go away when i've been moving around a bit after the new year. At the end of March it was bad enough that just sitting in front of a computer was pretty iffy, so I got a doctor's appointment. But public healthcare is pretty slow so the appointment wasn't until early May.

So I went to private fysio/chiro/ergotherapy using my own wallet between April and August, while I was waiting for public healthcare (public was like 1 month wait between every 15 minute visit and they mostly just gave me some pills and said "try this for a month and come back if it doesn't help").

In late May I was put on sick leave by the private chiropractor and they ordered an MRI of my neck from a private radiology company in Bergen. Which unfortunately had a pretty long queue to wait through so it wasn't until the end of August. And unfortunately there wasn't much more private heathcare was allowed to do without formal requests via the public sector.

When I got the MRI results in early September and handed them to my doctor, it showed little wrong with my skeleton, but my neck generally has more wear than normal (one bad and one kinda-bad disc, as well as worse arthritis than normal for my age), however it showed nothing that would cause stiff muscles. But there was a single 4mm bit of demyelination in my spinal cord. So to find out what that was I was sent to the hospital in Bergen for a general examination and a lumbar puncture during October. He specifically sent me to the hospital in Bergen because he knew my closest hospital (Førde) had an insane wait list.

Unfortunately the doctors in Bergen just didn't manage to complete the lumbar puncture (apparently my lower back is REALLY hard to stick a needle through), so it just hurt like hell and they decided to try again later, but referred me to the hospital in Førde instead, which means that I had to wait from October until this Tuesday (Jan 14th) to finally get my appointment. Førde ALSO couldn't manage to get a needle through my lower back at first despite there being three doctors present lmao.

But the lucky stars aligned and apparently the most skilled anesthesiologist in the hospital happened to walk by the door to my examination room so they asked him for help (because he's really good at sticking needles into wherever they need to go). That anesthesiologist basically just crouched down and managed to stick the needle in my back in less than 20s and it only felt like taking a regular blood test, but in my back. Then they sent me home.

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Descendants

Written by Quad on 2025-01-17 at 19:19

And today the senior physician called me and said they just got my results, and that he wanted me to get into the hospital as soon as possible, so they want me to show up as early as possible on Monday.

All I know is that they apparently found very high indicators of inflammation in my spinal fluid, so they jammed me in as early as possible for an MRI on Monday, and that they want me to stay until they've figured out something more. So I also know there's a bed reserved for me at the hospital.

So beyond an MRI, "as quick as possible" and a bed, I dunno what's happening on Monday.

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Written by fedops 💙💛 on 2025-01-17 at 19:24

@quad that's obviously not great but at least there's some progress now and that would seem like a good thing in my book.

Hope it will go well on Monday! Good luck! 🤞

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Written by Wolf480pl on 2025-01-17 at 19:36

@quad good luck, I hope it turns out it's something easily fixable!

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