Thursday, October 6, 2011

First day of MS observation

I went to University Hospital this morning at 10am after dropping the kids off at Kathy Seeger's house.  I didn't get out of there til 2:24 pm.  Originally the appointment was suppose to be 2-3 hours.  Anyway, first was the blood work, then we went off to the MRI.  I fell a sleep while in the MRI machine.  Operator got freaked when I didn't answer right away that I was alright.  After that Namita was paged so we could get on with the rest of the tests.  Instead I waited and waited.  After 45 min I asking them to call her instead of paging. Sure enough she never got the page.  So after lots of apologies we finally got back to the rest of the testing.
Anyway, I got blood drawn, was asked a bunch of medical questions, MS physical [similar to a drunk test], and a math test to evaluate cognitive skills. I've never felt stupider than I did after that math test.  It seemed so simple.  A voice on the computer says a number (#'s1-9 only) then another number which I had to add and tell (not write) the sum before the voice says another number.  When the next number is said I have to add that number to the last number spoken. And so on and so on.  It seems easy but I tested it out on the kids and they got frustrated because they kept wanting to add the next number to their last answer and not the last number spoken.  Once you get it wrong, it's hard to get back on track.  The trick is is to just wait and add the next two numbers you hear and continue from there.
After Dr. Fleming was done with his part of the evaluation my MS symptoms were categorized at a 1.5 out of  10. 10 being the worst.  Mainly my eye and bladder got me that score.
Oh yeah, I also was sent home with SWAG.  Drum roll....stool sample kit!  Sam nearly through it across the room when I told her what it was. HA!  I have to bring in a sample to each evaluation, which is once a month.
I will have 5 evaluations (one a month) then I will be on the HINT (whip worms) for 10 months.  Then, more evaluations for a couple more months to see how I'm doing after the trial is done.  After the whole trial is done I am allowed to get a copy of how it went.  For now they can't let me see or know anything so I don't screw up the results.

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