Yet another medical bulletin - 5/16/12

Yesterday was a pretty bad day.  I stayed in bed most of the day, as my upper back was really hurting.  In fact, I didn’t get dressed until about 5PM, and I blew off a church committee meeting in the evening.  As long as I was lying down, the upper back pain was not so bad.  Of course, I’m not sure how bad the raw pain would have been, as I took vicodin to address the pain.

Report from Dr Goller

In the morning we received a call from Dr Anca Goller, the endocrinologist at Emerson who ordered blood + urine tests.  The results were:

1.       My calcium + vitamin D levels are OK.  The volume of my urine (collected over a 24-hour period) is quite low, as I must not be drinking enough fluids.  As a result the concentration of everything is high, but adjusting for the lack of volume, the levels are OK.  [This puts Barbie in a nagging I-told-you-so position, but she may even be right.]

2.       Testosterone is normal.

3.       The test for Celiac disease is negative, but it does not rule out Celiac disease.

4.       My thyroid tests are slightly under normal.  That is good in that a hyper-active thyroid is one possible cause of osteoporosis, so thyroid activity is not causing my current problem.  The thyroid is not so low that it needs to be treated, but it should be monitored.

5.       The one thing that stands out as a problem is protein abnormalities in the blood.  Barbie, taking notes as usual, took this down as PEPSAS, but I cannot find any acronym of that name on the internet.  This needs to be followed up with a hematologist who also does oncology.  She has talked to a Dr DuBois at the Mass General – Emerson Cancer Center.  I mentioned that in 2006 a Dr Humberto Rossi did some blood work following an unusual blood test in an annual physical.  He ordered additional tests and found I had a monoclonal gammopathy.  His conclusion was that this was not a problem in my instance as some % of the people with this condition lead normal lives.  We need to get the tests that led to those conclusions and see if anything has changed since then.

6.       Creatine in urine was also high.  Dr. Goller did not say that this indicates anything.  (Does it mean I am a cretin?)

She was both faxing and mailing the results to Dr Rosen for my visit on Friday.  The protein in the blood could indicate something as bad as multiple myeloma, so it is not to be ignored.  We should keep her informed of what happens with Dr Rosen.

I registered with Mass General for access to Drs DuBois + Rossi.  I told the scheduling nurse that Dr Rossi had done blood work back in 2006 (or so).  She ordered the records of those tests from their off-site record storage location.  I now have an appointment to see Dr Rossi on 5/25.  Naturally, Mass General and Beth Israel have different computer systems, so they cannot share test results.

No call from Dr Muzin

Dr Muzin had said he would call if there were new results from the x-rays taken late Monday.  I called his office at the end of the day, but did not reach anybody.  How could I feel this bad without something new showing up?

Dr Quinn

We called Bridget after dinner, as things felt worse, not better.  She had access to the x-ray results from Monday.  It turns out that I have a compression fracture of the 7^th thoracic vertebra, a new fracture of the 5^th lumbar vertebra, and an increase in the fracture of the L3 vertebra.  It is odd that the pain is so concentrated in the upper back.  Clearly my bones are continuing to crack.  Looking back at the last few days, I cannot identify anything that would have caused the fractures.  I’ve been wearing the (hated) brace, and I have not done anything at all stressful or vigorous.  Getting in and out of cars, dental chairs, or x-ray platforms have been the most difficult things I’ve done.

Bridget will email Dr Rosen to inform him of the additional fractures and to see if there is any blood work he wants done in advance of my appointment on Friday.  I can go into a BIDMC location in Lexington for the blood tests, which is far more convenient than either Needham or Boston.

We will get the records of the 2006 blood work to take into the Friday appointment with Dr Rosen.  If nothing else, they should provide a baseline to compare current tests against.

We still don’t know what is causing all these bone fractures.  Clearly something is radically wrong.  We are getting to the specialists now, and they should be able to find the cause.  More to come…