5

30 December 2011

Posted by DMC on 31 December 2011 in Diary |

I had another bad painful night last night in particular this strange but severe pain in my heel. Coincidentally I received an e-mail from you then Dr. Mark Abrahams, and the pain you are in the consultant from Addenbrooke’s who previously injected my shoulder. He thinks the general joint pains are a mixture of arthritis and inflammation as a result of my condition but specifically, on the heel is he says ‘it sounds like it may be neuropathic (caused by nerve damage), the distribution of the symptoms is not suggestive of involvement of a specific nerve. Again, I’m not convinced that injections would be of help.
His secretary will ring me in the New Year and arrange consultation but in the meantime I’ve asked Mark to think of some way of relieving the heel pain. The others I can live with that one is unbearable. It would be good to hear from any other MND patient who has also suffered from joint pains and what if anything was done about it .

The other thing which is causing some concern, without wishing to sound like a hypochondriac, is the hot flushes and rising temperature which I mentioned previously. Papworth commented on my blood pressure as being’ greatly elevated 209/124 (compare that with my blood pressure of 130/70 when I was at my fittest a few years ago visiting the gym five days a week) but made no suggestion as to why and wanted anything should be done about it. In the Addenbrookes report which followed shortly afterwards they referred me being hypertensive and suggested that the GP take another blood pressure test in a couple of weeks (from the Addenbrookes visit 8 December). Having not heard from my GP I suspect that they reports from Addenbrookes and Papworth just go onto my file unread otherwise the GP would have picked up on the need for a further blood pressure test. . The surgery was closed from Christmas eve up to the New Year so obviously I will now have to wait until next week but I must follow this up. Nobody has suggested a connection between the short periods of hot flushes and I temperature change unless there is a sign of being hypertensive and if it is what, if anything can they do about it?


I received a nice invitation to lunch at the Cricketers from my friend Rowan (Planterose) for 27 January, so this is something to look forward to.

While I was writing this blog one of my carers came to do the midday call. We were chatting away and she told me that she had just bought an HP (Hewlett-Packard) tablet computer for £250 the specification was pretty impressive. 500 gig hard drive; 3-gig of RAM plus some basic software can also include some singing and dancing features which my current laptop does not have compare this with my own, top of the range, Toshiba satellite laptop which I bought around 12 years ago. From memory it has a 32 bit hard drive and came with a half a gig of RAM. I think it also had XP professional. That laptop cost me £1685 which I suppose in today’s money must be worth £3000/£4000 which gives you an idea how incredibly cheap is the modern laptop compared with those of decade or so ago.

Do you recall the showing you the world’s fastest train (28 November 2 011 entry). Built by the French this magnificent beast reached a record 574.8 kmph. Now I can show you the type of interiors that are being built in the modern Chinese trains. Click here to see them.

Where did we lose our way? bearing in mind that we invented the train in the first place and even charging the exorbitant fares that we do the new coaches that are being built are nothing like as luxurious as those in France and China.


5 Comments

  • Christine from BC says:

    You most certainly should have your blood pressure checked and dealt with early in the new year. I have/have had neuropathic pains (for other reasons than yours) and totally sympathize with you, they can be quite unbearable at times. Hopefully some help will come from your specialist ASAP.

    Happy New Year, Prof. May “stable” health and happiness abound in 2012.

  • Amanda says:

    I echo the sentiment that hopefully the doctors can find something to address your pain. My other half has decided to use something called tart cherry juice mixed with water. Suppose to help you sleep and other people have said it helps their gout. So he is giving it a try. May 2012 bring you less pain.

  • DMC says:

    Dear Amanda.

    I hope you and your family had a great Christmas we certainly dId. I wish you both as happy New Year as you can manage. I suppose you had to be somewhere about your husband’s condition (and even his name) but forgive me I’m not sure where and when. Anyway with the greatest respect your dear husband the tart cherry juice sounds disgusting. They might have more effectively rubbed it on! (I will mention it on my blog without of course naming names and see if any other MND patient has had any success with it

    I do hope you read my replies in the comments sections .
    Joking aside you know I wish you both all joy and happiness. Mark

  • DMC says:

    Dear Christine. Forgive me I have been dilatory in responding to your kind comment. I have already asked the doctor to arrange to have my blood pressure taken. I suspect it was just an odd blip. This was a pain is concerned most of the time I can cope with it reasonably well particularly as Alice is a saint and turns me two or three times in the night.

    May I wish you and yours and really happy New Year within the bounds of your capabilities.

    Mark

  • Amanda says:

    I am sure it does sound disguisting (tart cherry) but it actually gets diluted with water. Guess like blackcurrant. Some of the cough medications can be just as bad. But hopefully everyone will stay away from the dreaded flu and colds during the winter.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Copyright © 2008-2024 D. Mark Cato's Blog All rights reserved.