The second set of tests

Both the Chiropractor and the MD related similar versions of the radiologist's "impression" of the MRI. The apparent lesion was .. well, here is the radiologist's note:

• on 11 August 2005, he wrote "Pathologic marrow infiltration replacing much of the sacrum with extension anteriorly into the presacral soft tissues as well as subtle involvement suspaectd at L4. Neoplasm should be considered including metastatic disease, lymphoma/leukemia and myeloma."

There are a lot of multi-syllable words there and most of them were way beyond my regular vocabulary. In a nutshell, my MD said, "We need to do tests to prove you do not have any of those. None of them are good. You do not want them." He also said that, in his experience, 75% of MRIs ordered by chiropractors turn out to be false positive. I guess he was trying to raise my spirits while taking a dig at chiropractors.

Anyway, he gave me a set of perscriptions for blood tests, urinalysis, extra large leeches and advice to eat well. I asked him if he could recommend a physical therapist to help me strengthen my lumbar. I figured if it was a false positive, it would be best to get on with a course of therapy that would help me reduce the pain. When he told me "No. It is not the time for you to exercise or get physical therapy. Let's do the testing to eliminate the possibility of some of the causes for now" that was when I started feeling kind of shitty -- like this thing was going to get more serious before I was done with it.

Now, he is a nice guy and all. But I really had to listen closely as he built up the information toward his conclusion. I felt like the Lone Ranger's sidekick, Tonto, with my ear down low against the train track listening for the bad guys approaching. A week earlier, when I had seen him after the MRI, he had explained the radiologist's findings. He had talked with me about the need to thoroughly investigate my condition. He said his investigation of would be an attempt to rule out the possibility that the lesion on my sacrum was caused by a disease of my bone marrow. He cautioned me right away that if the blood and urine did not rule out the radiologist's findings, I would be giving bone biopsy samples. That caught my attention. Oh Boy! Wow! I lifted up my head and realized my big chance to benefit from recent advances in medical science was coming right at me like a freight train!

Okay. Fine, I would give all the body parts and specimens the labs needed. We had to find that false positive if possible. The following Monday morning, I found a blood letter who ageed to fit me in right away. She had an open slot just after a troll and before a midget (sorry, little person). The results were faxed out on Wednesday and I went back to the MDs office.

That time my MD was more direct. He said that the blood tests from my general physical and the special ones from the blood letter matched. I gave them my liters of blood and urine on the 11th of August and on the 15th of August 2005. The results were:

• In both tests mMy hemoglobin was 12.9 (normal range is 13.2 - 17.1 g/dL)
• RBC 3.96 L then 4.05 (normal range is 4.2-5.8 Mill/mcL)
• Hematocrit 37.4 then 37.6 (normal range is 38.5-50 %)

He said that meant I was anemic. He asked me if I had been feeling fatigued, run down or dizzy. I could not say that I had. So he hit me with the urinalysis results. There they found "Free Kappa (monoclonal free light chain)" protein. They found a lot of it:

• Protein total, urine 414 (normal range is 14-119 mg/g Creat)

The serious part, he told me is the 'monoclonal' part. That means one particular type of cell is multiplying out of control. As the cells breakdown, after they've lived their short life cycle, they pass out of me in my urine. Just one of the diseases I did not want to have behaves this way. Myeloma.

I was still in the mindset of a guy who was searching for the false positive. He said he was sending me to an oncologist who would review the tests and likely ask for a pound of flesh, or a bone biopsy if needed. I lost a bit of my optimism after his use of the word 'bone.' As in, "They will place a needle into your hip bone and take out a small sample of bone and aspirate some blood for lab analysis." Still, I wanted to get him back to his former chiropractor kicking ways. So I asked him what were the odds now that the next set of tests would prove that myeloma was a false positive. He said, "To prove the myeloma false positive, we would have to prove the blood and urinalsis were both wrong. That is very unlikely."

Shit. I must have ducked when I should have swerved.