Well, all neurological diagnoses take time to Spam/VIRUS. I knew I didn’t have MND because I’m still alive - Motor Neurone Disease finishes you off in a couple years max. So after a diagnostic debacle by the local locum neurologist, who barely examined me, my GP referred me to the Walton Centre in Liverpool, which is where I went yesterday.
The consultant (a very attractive lady) took a precise history, then asked me to strip to the skivvies and lie down on the couch. Then she just watched me for a couple of minutes, noting the fasciculations of my thigh muscles, and the toes persistently twitching upwards. Then she examined me, noting the spasticity in the leg muscles, absent ankle reflexes, and up going plantar reflex. In fact she tested for reflexes I didn’t know I was supposed to have, like the jaw reflex.
How she managed to keep her paws off my Adonis like body and still make a diagnosis I will never know, but she did.
So what I’ve got (odds on, she reckons) is PLS. Progressive Lateral Sclerosis, a form of MND. It’s exceptionally rare. Only 3% of MND cases are PLS. The big difference is prognosis- as often as not, folk with PLS die of something else, because it seems to confine itself to the legs. Because it’s so rare, now that Liverpool have poached me, I have no doubt I’ll be invited to final MRCP exams to challenge young doctors’ diagnostic skills. At least you get all expenses paid.
So I look forward to a life of ever decreasing mobility. I can still get around the flat on two crutches, so that’s a good baseline. And I can confidently renew my Blackburn Rovers season ticket, as I’m not going to shuffle off this mortal coil anytime soon.
And you’ll have to put up with me for a while longer, I’m afraid.
