"There's a myth that anyone who has a liver problem has brought it on themselves" This quote is from a Crohn's disease patient living with a blocked portal vein hoping for a liver transplant (Independent 31st Oct 2010)

Monday 22 November 2010

Back to the starting blocks

Weight: 8st 13. Lost a bit somewhere.
750 words done of my 1,000 word NVQ assignment on 'administering medication to individuals'. Right up my street but finding it difficult to find the right 1,000 words!
Walk: 3/4 hour with K and her dog Basil on Friday along the canal and through Tinkers Clough (above), some of it hilly. Drive T to his KRIV work (about 3 miles)
Saturday: Drive into Macclesfield (4 miles) and shop for 1/2 hour while J had a haircut.
My upper body aches like mad even after such a short drive.
Monday: walk 0.7 miles down a steep hill to the butchers and back up again. Workout for the thigh muscles.
I'm stiff and sore every evening, usually better once up and about in the morning.
Over the weekend, surfing the forums, someone said that the 'gold standard' of diagnosing liver disease is a biopsy. I didn't have one under Dr Caravan-a-nan's care as his view was that poking into the liver could spread cancer cells. I had a non-invasive Fibroscan instead. A sample of liver tissue is the best way to diagnose the type of hepatitis (or other condition) causing persistant inflammation. A forum poster suggests finding out if the hospital path lab still has the tissue sample slides. It's 2 months ago, so I'm not optimistic.
Call Dr Caravan-a-nan's secretary. Yes she is acting on my email asking for an earlier than 2011 appointment for a diagnosis. Sadly it seems another patient will have their slot inexplicably cancelled/delayed so that I can be squeezed in. That's dreadful. She doesn't know the workings of the Pathology unit at North Manchester but will ask O'Blimey's secretary to send over my file to Dr Caravan-a-nan. If nothing has progressed by the end of the week I may have to bite the bullet and ask my GP for a referral elsewhere, but his appointment diary is booked until December 9th by patients who already know they are going to be ill. There's a hepatologist at Manchester Royal Infirmary whose speciality is autoimmune liver disease.
The drugs to treat both viral hepatitis (such as interferon, costly @ circa £4,000 per course of treatment) or steroids for autoimmune (Prednisolone @ 18p a pill for as long as it takes) are out there.
Email my Macmillan nurse as she is part of the Pennine hospital trust network to see if she will ask the Pennine pathology department about the specimen. She has an out-of-office reply until 29th November. Sigh.

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