Sunday 4 March 2012

Making MSA understandable









 I think I now have the beginnings of an MSA dictionary thanks to Simrit, a new qualified doctor and a good friend of Grace’s from St Andrews University days.  It is not complete yet as I have found some more. If you have a contribution to make, it can be funny too, just send them to my Facebook account.                   
It is interesting that all the terminology in last week's blog and explained here was found on one side of an A4 sheet of paper in a letter to my GP after a consultation in London with an honorary clinical assistant to Prof Andrew Lees.
This week’s exciting news is that I'm now the proud owner of a blue badge – as yet untested.
I have had a couple falls this week but my bowel has been causing me the most problems.  I also have not been my chirpy self, rather flat.  Having lunch with Ian yesterday broke up the tedium of the week as I was able to get out of the house - I feel more and more housebound.  Ian is such good company and  lunch with him was a real tonic.
Ian also gave me a detailed account of a neighbour who is suffering from bowel cancer and being treated at Airedale Hospital.  It was a similar story to mine and made me laugh.                                           



MSA TERMS

ORTHOSTATIC  HYPOTENSION: Basically it’s the dizziness/head rush u can sometimes feel when u stand up. Literally it’s caused by the drop in blood pressure when u stand up. Orthostatic means standing up and hypotension is low blood pressure.

PRE-SYNCOPAL EPISODES: syncope means fainting. Pre-syncope is the bit before u faint so kind of the same as above - dizziness or whatever other feelings u get before u faint.

REM: rapid eye movement. I think. Don’t know what context it is in though. Its best described I guess when u are in the state of sleep and your eyes move rapidly...it’s in the name really.

MYOCLONUS: myo means one muscle and clonus means twitch. It’s an involuntary twitch of a muscle or muscle group
.
ANTEROCOLLIS: l admit, I cheated and googled it....ha ha! It’s the characteristic head/neck bent forwards that you see in people with Parkinson's disease.

DISARTHRIC: Disarthria is difficulty with pronouncing words - you have to be patient. A person with Disarthria is said to be disarthric.

CONGENITAL STRABISMUS: Congenital means you are born with it and strabismus is an eye disorder where both eyes don’t line up the same way.

DYSPHONIC:
ANTEROCOLLIS:
BRADYKINESIA:
MINIPOLYMYOCLONUS:
MYOCLONUS
EPHEDRINE:
MIDODRINE                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             






                                                                                                                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

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