2. “We are all X-men” series: MRI – the DX
Monday, February 11, the little Padawan woke up feeling confident and ready for the big bench (as “big” as big means to a flea-lifter). Being not completely retarded, though, she looked up the lab result on the internet. The medical report was ugly on the elbow issue: ligament tears… bone commitment… and she had lifted aroung 220lbs the week before, talking away the pain (which really works for lifters! This should be studied). She decided to check with her ortho-guru if it was ok to bench heavy that afternoon (she really suspected he would advise her against it). He read the report and told her to drop by immediately, bringing the actual images with her. And, as she thought, he forbid her to lift that Monday. He knows he can never set lifting-free periods longer than six weeks for her, and that is what he negotiated, with special training strategies to accommodate her needs during recovery.
He then proceeded to examine the shoulder images, whose report was not exactly alarming. However, the images looked scary to him. Usually calm and controlled, Fabiano, the ortho-gury, looked concerned. He told her that he could not be sure, but that the stain on the humerus head looked like an avascular necrosis (AN). If this was so, then other necrotic areas could be spread over the skeleton and she needed an urgent scintigraphy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintigraphy ) to clear this DX. She looked at the image:
It meant nothing to her.
Ok, let’s drop the tale’s third person for a while: many readers know that I am a researcher and medical information specialist. So you can well imagine that my head was spinning faster than the Intel processor on my ortho’s computer at this point. I could hardly restrain myself from diving into the keyboard and researching all about AN and T2 contrast MRI. The Padawan-lifter asked punctual questions concerning the DX’s implications and the scintigraphy’s contribution. She was not totally relaxed when it sank in that she could have developed a pretty ugly bone degeneration, that her bones could be ready to collapse and that all this could be symptoms of something even uglier. One suggestion from doctors was her previous use of short half-life androgenic steroids and another, cancer.
She left Fabiano’s office ready for three things: dozens of phone calls to schedule her scintigraphy as fast as possible, finish a work-related report and delving whatever medical evidence she could put her hands on. No time for projections into the future. While she sat down and made phone calls and decisions, everybody else was falling apart. Family and friends were freaking out. Focus.
Follow the next chapter on “the test”!
