Peripheral Neuropathy: Beth's Google-Degree Diagnosis

Once again, I, Miss BlogAlong Cassidy, Expert Physicianess, Graduate of the Impressive Medical School of Looking Stuff Up on the Internet, have been doing internet research and unabashedly coming up with any old diagnosis I think is right.

(I'm trying to CARE that I don't have a medical degree, but it just ain't working.)

So...after much thinking upon Billy's combination platter of symptoms this week, and after much googling, I am ready, as you can see by my portrait below, to make my Official Pontification:



Doctor William "Cowboy Willy" Drennan has peripheral neuropathy.

And, at this point, peripheral neuropathy isn't nearly as bad as it may sound.

Peripheral Neuropathy--Technical Medical Definition:

Um....

Okay, well, I'm not sure exactly what it IS, but I think he has it.

It's something about the nerve endings getting all wonky from chemotherapy, and it doesn't kick in until 3 to 5 months (that would be now) after your last chemo (English majors will have, by now, said a tsk tsk tsk that I didn't spell out numbers less than 10 and that I switched to second person when I said your--and maybe even that I didn't use commas between the tsk and the tsk and the tsk. But most importantly, they will have forgotten, due to this grammatical digression, that I have no idea how to define peripheral neuropathy. "But dahling, isn't it more important to LOOK smart than to BE smart?")

But really, I do think he has this peripheral neuropathy thing. A full thirty percent of people who receive Cisplatin (which he did) have some form of peripheral neuropathy appearing a few months afterward.

Symptoms on the ponyboy:

1. Numbness and tingling on soles of feet;
2. Numbness and tingling on fingers;
3. Hoarseness;
4. Uncomfortable feeling in larynx;
5. Something I can't write about because it is potty-related (that's a medical term);
6. And some other stuff I can't remember.

So, the thing is, we were--meaning I was, because he doesn't worry--getting pretty worried about these strange symptoms. Since, as you know, we were forbidden to receive (forbidden from receiving?) an MRI or body scan of any kind by Doctor Jekyll at Duke who pronounced any such diagnostic procedure "too expensive" for a mere cancer patient with stage 4 cancer that has metastasized all over his abdomen.

I mean, body scans are for SICK people, for Pete's sake!

See? I just can't stop harping on that. I might never get over it.

Neither might a jury of my peers. But let's not go there yet.

Anyway, I actually hope the BillyHoss DOES have peripheral neuropathy, and that that is ALL it is, because, while peripheral neuropathy CAN be a pretty bad thing if it keeps spreading, it usually doesn't get too much worse after chemo, and it can also reverse, although that happens slowly.

Okay, that's it for today.

PS: And anybody who tells my mother what I posted yesterday is gonna get a taste of this here cowgirl boot! She REALLY would NOT see the humor in that particular blog appearance of hers. I'm not kiddin...