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+--- Thread: I'm more broken than you (/showthread.php?tid=270)
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it's you - Drunk Monk - 04-28-2009
hot flashes. that happens to yetis when they hit menopause. you're right. you ARE more broken than me.
Re: I'm more broken than you - Dr. Ivor Yeti - 04-30-2009
"Yetiopause", please. It is just a phase, though.
The Money Shot - cranefly - 08-28-2009
First there were all the blood tests -- a flotilla of test tubes. The only thing that stood out was an elevated rheumatoid factor. But this alone does not diagnose rheumatoid arthritis, and I didn't have any of the other symptoms.
So suspicion fell on palindromic rheumatism. This is a much rarer form that usually doesn't cause joint damage but is chronic. It usually involves only one or two joints, and it comes and goes -- sometimes 2 or 3 times a year, sometimes once every few years.
The problem is, the diagnosis consists of eliminating every other possible disease -- and my goodness there's a lot of them, which means more blood tests. Those all come out negative. So it very well could be palindromic. Not that it matters much. There's no clear-cut treatment, no medicines that have been proven reliable.
So I'm in the same boat I started in. I'm Jardeen in No Country for Old Men. That's how I walk, only not nearly that fast. Sometimes I even crawl around the house. And this has been going on for 5 months.
So I get x-rays of the right foot and ankle. It comes back pretty much normal. I have slight bunions (which I suspect most kids who wore shoes as kids have), my arches are borderline high (opposite of flat feet), and there's a slight buildup of bone in the back of the heel near the achilles (could be a problem, but doesn't look nearly bad enough).
So I get a bone scan of the right foot and ankle. I'm expecting another bloody negative test as they shoot me full of radiation. That expectation holds up during the initial scan, which they do immediately to check for abnormalities of the soft tissue. But then I come back 3 hours later for the second scan, which checks for problems with the bone. Well, my heel bone lights up like a Christmas tree. It's spectacular, impresses everyone in the place. They ask if I've kicked anything really hard lately. I mention 17 years of Shaolin kung fu, where almost every set starts with a stomp of the foot -- the right foot. The doctor wonders if maybe I've had a heel fracture that's never healed.
I go to a podiatrist who specializes in heel problems. He's good. He's an Olympic class runner. And he's got photos on the walls of Olympians with thank you notes to him. Yeah, he's good. He has some ideas about what might be wrong, but an MRI would be very helpful. The problem is, I've burned through so much money by this point, and Blue Cross Anthem hasn't covered a penny of it. Not one cent. So I balk. I explain the financial situation. He tells me the MRI will run 2K. He decides to hold off on that, gives me instructions for things to try, along with his phone number in case I decide to go ahead with the MRI.
A month later I call him. I'm ready to go ahead with the MRI. Things simply have not changed. So yesterday I go in. After filling out a very long questionnaire, I lie down on the narrow table and the technician gets my foot all strapped down. He asks if I'm ready. I say yes. He smiles and says, "This is the money shot."
Yep, the money shot. Best tool for looking at soft tissue. And expensive.
They've given me ear mufflers, but even through them I hear jackhammers going off in weird patterns. Sometimes rat-a-tat, sometimes more spaced out. They come from different directions, though that's probably my imagination. Each noise is a magnetic field pulse designed to toggle the nuclear spin states of atoms -- mostly hydrogen atoms, and most of these in water. But it's way complicated. I just have to trust the technology -- and lie absolutely still. It takes an hour, and I get sleepy, but I refuse to drift off, because then I might jerk awake and move.
After an hour the technician pulls me out. "Excellent job," he stays. "You did your part. The images are very detailed. Some patients move around, and then the doctor is disappointed because things are too blurred. But yours are excellent."
So now I've got this big oversized folder of MRI images. They look like x-rays. I've even pulled a couple out and tried to look at them. But I can't decipher them. So I'm waiting to get a followup appointment with the podiatrist so he can interpret "the money shot."
MRIs suck - Drunk Monk - 08-28-2009
When I took my MRI for my neck, they said "ok, don't swallow or breath or it'll get all blurry". Right.
As for the ruckus, it didn't strike me as that loud. Then again, I like high volume.
When I filled out the questionnaire, I mentioned that I once had a metal splinter in my eye (thanks AFS) so the whole procedure had to stop and I had to have an extra X-ray on my eyes to make sure there wasn't any fragments left. The MRI tech told me that even the smallest sliver would come tearing out of my eye, possibly through my brain, if the MRI was turned on.
gulp.
Re: The Money Shot - cranefly - 08-28-2009
Bloody hell. The podiatrist can't see me until September 17 to interpret the MRI images.
You can bet I'll be reading up on MRIs and trying to figure them out myself.
DM, was yours a stand-up MRI? I've heard those are a lot quieter. Also, I was in a 3 tesla machine (they range from 1 tesla to 3 tesla). I suspect the bigger magnets make for bigger bangs.
Wow, no swallowing or breathing. I'm glad I wasn't in that boat. I guess they could have put you under and stopped your heart...
BTW, my younger brother almost punched out everyone in the room when he got his first MRI. He was bellowing the moment they put him in, and they had to yank him out and he was in a fighting state, lemme tell ya. After that, he forces them to put him under first.
I wasn't fully inside this sucker, but mostly. I don't think I would have a problem going all the way. I mean, I wanted to be an astronaut. Have you seen astronauts being jammed into those bulky spacesuits, then having the helmet fitted onto their heads? You won't be seeing many claustrophobics in space, that's for sure.
Re: I'm more broken than you - Greg_phpbb3_import1 - 08-28-2009
If you have the file of images on disk there is a way to import them into Photoshop. Photoshop will then assemble into a 3-d rendering of your foot. They have to be in a special file format. I remember we did something with The Queen's spine. Oh, yeah. We put them on youTube. Don't worry. Your privacy is safe in my hands.
Re: The Money Shot - cranefly - 08-29-2009
It's weird. They gave me the hardcopies. You know, the oversized x-ray-like images. Very impressive bundle.
They must have sent the image files to the doc.
Yeah, I play around a lot with photoshop and would love to have them in digital to try that (I've seen nice MRI slice shows on the web). But you know, for 2K they can only give you so much...
Re: I'm more broken than you - Greg_phpbb3_import1 - 08-29-2009
Don't ask for the moon or anything. You are only a patient. I wonder if you called the lab . . . .
Maybe you could make a nice flipbook with the pics?
Dammit, Greg, I'm a doctor, not a patient - cranefly - 08-29-2009
Er, I mean, I'm a patient, not a doctor.
I hope you're proud. You kept teasing my curiosity finger until the damned thing started typing at the keyboard.
I just emailed the lady at the facility about getting digital files.
We'll see.
Re: Super fast - cranefly - 08-29-2009
Even before I hit Submit for my last post, I got an email ping.
Here's the answer.
======
Hi Mr Shockley,
We can not provide digital files however we can provide you with a CD
with your study on it. Please let me know if you would like this and if want to pick up or we can mil it to you.
Have a great day,
=======
So I'm going to arrange to pick them up.
Thanks for pestering me.
Re: I'm more broken than you - Greg_phpbb3_import1 - 08-29-2009
Awesome. My two favorite things at conjunction: medical imaging and computers. I need to go towel off.
Mine was a lie down test - Drunk Monk - 08-29-2009
Stuck my head into that crazy machine. I didn't think to ask the number. But I totally identify with the claustrophoic astronaut sensation. I had the exact same feeling. Something about all that plastic - it was very Kubrick 2001. As an undergrad, one of my profs did space sickness studies and got me into NASA to see his lab. That exacerbated that feeling.
Re: I'm more broken than you - Dr. Ivor Yeti - 08-30-2009
I've had a nice quiet MRI using a new "open" style of machine and a noisy one on a very old-style enclosed model. The noise on the old one was impressive in its loudness and in the seeming randomness of the types of sounds and when they occurred.
It's beginning to look a lot like scalpel... - cranefly - 08-31-2009
Well, I got the CD with images. It's all packaged up in a viewer application. I could export to jpeg or other formats, but no need at this point. I can see all with the viewer.
To my surprise, a nice diagnostic letter came with the CD, analyzing everything. I guess my podiatrist doesn't have to look at the MRI, because someone already did the dirty work.
Several things leap out, in a magnetic resonance sort of way. But the biggest problem by far is a peroneus brevis tendon split. If you're at all curious about what this is, here's a good site. Just hover over the images for enlargements.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=164378
The condition chronically enflames my heel bursa, which affects the Achilles (though it seems healthy). Essentially, I'm kaput until something gets done. And while it will be late September before I see my podiatrist, I suspect the "something" is surgery.
Bloody hell. Not much I can do for now but buy me a captive bolt pistol like Javier Bardem and take out my frustrations on unsuspecting friends.
Schadenfreude for CF - Greg_phpbb3_import1 - 09-01-2009
I just got back from the emergency room. It's 3:35 in the am. I feel like DM rolling back from a concert.
At 12:30, I awoke to the sounds of dogs playing in the yard. The problem was that two of the dogs weren't mine.
The long story will be later today. Suffice it to say, I've had x-rays. I've bled a lot. And I have a massive bite on my foot courtesy of Preston. I get to go back to emergency later today to have the wound redressed. They say I've got the super anti-biotic burn ointment to put on it. And they gave me thirty tabs of Vicodin. Party at Greg's.