It would be nice to get an answer - 5/20/12

Barbie & I met with Dr Harold Rosen at Beth Israel Friday, 5/18.  He is an endocrinologist specializing in osteoporosis highly recommended by Bridget.  He spent over an hour with us, and lived up to his billing.  Unfortunately, at this point he has not yet figured out what is going on.  He was very thorough, probing for things like childhood illnesses that would have led to loss of bone mass.  But he noted that everything points the other way until February of this year, when the back pains suddenly appeared.  He was impressed that whatever-it-is suddenly appeared, and is still occurring, as the latest batch of fractures occurred when I was fully aware of the danger and doing virtually nothing.

Dr Rosen ordered a series of blood and urine tests, and set up two MRI sessions for Sunday morning.  One of the possible diagnoses is multiple myeloma.  But Dr Rosen said he would expect that there would be a strong spike in unusual blood proteins if that were happening.  The unusual blood proteins are present, but only slightly elevated.  So myeloma needs to be investigated, but Dr Rosen does not expect it to be the culprit.  I had a series of x-rays over most of the bones in the body to see if there were tell-tale bone density gaps.  Bridget knows the pathologist who read the x-rays, and she says no density gaps were found.

Dr Rosen was dismissive of Coumadin as a possible cause.  Heparin, which is another blood thinner that they give you when in the hospital for pulmonary embolisms, could be a cause, if I had been on it for any length of time.  But I have only been on it while in the hospital, probably 3 times.  There were other suspect drugs, most of which I had never heard of.

The definitive test for multiple myeloma is a bone marrow biopsy.  Dr Rosen does not have authority to do biopsies.  That is the realm of hematologists, and I have an appointment to see Dr Levine at BI on 5/30.  Dr Rosen will talk to Dr Levine, and convey a sense of urgency to him (which may result in the appointment being moved up).

Overall, given that we were expecting Dr Rosen to definitively declare what the cause of the bone fractures is, we were disappointed.  But we now realize that our expectations were unrealistic.  Clearly we have a good team of experts working on the case, and my case is not the first to present odd and contradictory symptoms.  They will get to the bottom of this and come up with a course of treatment.  Meanwhile I just have to be patient and move around as if I have a backbone of eggshells.