say something....

I had an appointment yesterday with the nurse at my local doctor's practice.  I was there to attend the travel clinic and to see if I needed any extra immunisations or malaria prophylaxis before our trip to SE Asia in August.  As expected, I'm up to date in most things, although the nurse took my blood to test my antibodies to see if the course of Hepatitis B injections I had in 1992 are still any use or if I need another booster.  I also picked up another prescription for some malarone.  No dramas.

As the nurse was checking the various travel warnings for Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, I idly glanced over her shoulder at my medical record, displayed on her computer screen.  Amongst all the usual stuff about my condition (which is flagged up on the top of the screen, lest anyone miss it), I noticed that there appeared to have been some correspondence recorded since my last visit.  If you remember, I went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago to ask about the "lump in my throat/chest" that I had been experiencing.  The doctor I saw checked with his senior partner and then gave me a call to say that they thought it was probably neurological, and thus related to my MS, and that I should therefore talk to the MS Nurses about it.  In the end, I didn't bother.  It had started to bother me less, and as I have an appointment with my neurologist at the end of July for a regular check-up, I just thought I'd bring it up then.  I don't imagine there's anything they can do about it, so I figured I'd just wait. 

It turns out, according to my medical notes, that my doctor has been in correspondence with the MS Nurses and with the Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham, and between them, they are referring me to a speech and voice therapy centre.

Eh?

I do still have the feeling of something caught behind my breastbone, but I wasn't particularly aware of any problems with the way I speak.  No more than usual, anyway.  I do have a nagging worry that I slur my words slightly; not much, but enough to make me slightly hard to understand.  I haven't really mentioned this to anyone though, and I suspect that I've always had a slight tendency to mumble and that it isn't anything to do with my MS at all.  I'm certainly not quite sure how my doctor might have picked that up from my complaint about my throat/chest, anyway.  The fact that these medical types have been talking about me without feeling the need to mention it to me is, however, of no surprise at all.

Another appointment to see the neuropsychologist to go through my test results came through this week too, so this news is just what I needed. 

More doctors.  Hurray.