Pituitary Awareness Quiz: The Results

I was so impressed by how many of you took part in my little quiz - apologies for the long delay in coming out and praising you for it! Some people dipped in and out for the odd question, while others were with us for the long haul.

Bearing in mind that double points were awarded for witty answers rather than merely correct ones, I present... The Results!

THE RESULTS

The winner is... Clare! With the close runner-up Davey D. Congratulations guys, you may officially brag wildly about your knowledge of the pituitary gland and its inhabitants.

And as I did promise a praise poem for the winner:


There was a young lady named Clare
As wise (and fierce) as an owlbear.
She was a quiz queen
 - quite the answer machine -
she made other contestants despair!

Schrödinger's MRI Scan (A Hallowe'en Special)

Some time ago, I received an appointment from the hospital for an MRI scan on the 31st October. I immediately - and diligently - phoned them up to ask whether or not this was a mistake. I had been due to have a scan after three continuous months on my current medication, and due to delays in getting funding for my lanreotide injections, I'd not had one for two months at that point. I was told not to cancel the appointment, and that I would be informed of whether or not to go.

I've reminded them about this twice since, and both times been informed that I almost certainly won't need to have the scan on the 31st - because it would be wildly pointless - but that I shouldn't cancel it, and it will be rearranged.

Well, the scan is next Wednesday (on Hallowe'en, no less!) and I've still heard bugger all. I don't know what the cost of an MRI scan is to the NHS, but I do know that the scanners at my local hospital can sometimes be booked up months in advance, and for me to be hanging on to an appointment I don't need, or to have a scan that won't be particularly useful to my doctors, is stupid.

I was going to attempt to call and remind them about this at lunchtime today, but I was hit by a sudden feeling of futility and hopelessness, so I composed a poem about it instead.

***

My MRI on Wednesday is sure to be a blast
I'll have more scans in future; I've had some in the past.
But this one will be special, for there's something I don't know -
Nobody has informed me whether or not I should go!

I can't say if they're expecting me to turn up on the day,
Or whether they'll be angry if instead I stay away.
I'm caught in a Catch-22, for I've no way of knowing
if I should go (or not) until I am already going.

It's Schrödinger's MRI scan, with my head inside the box
I'm quantumly entangled like a cat (or like a fox.
The fox is very prone to being used in paradoxes
For it's fairly cute and docile, and it wears such tiny sockses.)

My scan is not alive, yet its brain function has not ended
In terms of animation, it is currently suspended.
Like Dracula, there's still a chance it may rise from the grave;
EEG scans indicate disrupted delta waves.

Perhaps, for Hallowe'en, the MRI team has decided
that they're sick of being left out, and cruelly derided
(The other hospital staff tend to laugh and call them names
because, you see, they claim all MRI scans look the same).

And consequently they've now all come up with this little caper
(Which I find about as funny as a piece of plain white paper)
They won't click "confirm appointment", neither will they click "delete"
And when I show up for my scan, they'll all shout: "Trick or treat!"

Pituitary Awareness Quiz: Day 7

Regular readers will be unsurprised to hear that I still have not heard back from the hospital about, you know, getting my surgery arranged or whether I need to go to the MRI I'm due to have in a week. I had a really special time on Friday when I tried to contact the neurosurgery clinic to find out what the heck was going on. It went something like this:

Attempt 1:

Hospital Employee 1: Hello, switchboard at The Hospital, how may I help?
Me: Hi, could you put me through to the neurosurgery clinic please?
Hospital Employee 1: (suddenly speaking s-l-o-w-l-y and clearly) Yes, of course, I'll put you through now.
(A pause. The phone rings.)
Hospital Employee 2: Hello, Dermatology department. How can I help?

Attempt 2:

Hospital Employee 1: Hello, switchboard at The Hospital, how may I help?
Me: Hi, I just called to be put through to neurosurgery but I ended up on the dermatology phone instead?
Hospital Employee 1: Oh, sorry about that. I'll just connect you now.
(A pause. The phone rings.)

(For like five minutes, then I gave up)

On attempt 3 I got through to the Neuroscience answering machine and left a message, but I'm not hugely sanguine about the results, especially as they've now had three days to phone me. Oi vey!

Anyway, today's question is a more creative question. Presenting:

Pituitary Awareness Quiz

Day 7, Question 7

Q.7: I will be awarding a SPECTACULAR bonus of no less than FIVE POINTS to anyone who can write me a short poem (two lines is sufficient) about/vaguely related to the pituitary. Bonus points for anyone who finds a rhyme for "pituitary"!

My MRI Experience: Stuck In A Moment. And Also A Tube.

Today I thought I'd continue my story of diagnosis and treatment, admittedly with a slight gap in continuity from my last post, by talking about the first MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scan I had. Brain MRI scans are pretty cool; it seems very weird to be able to look at a picture of the internal apparatus with which you are looking at the picture of the internal apparatus that you're using to - well, you know what I mean. Brain MRIs get recursive fast!

Around this time last year, having had my introduction to my local endocrinology department, blood tests had decreed that I did not suffer from Resistance to Thyroid Hormone and therefore the doctors knew that I almost certainly had a pituitary adenoma producing Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH-oma).

Endocrinologists tend to leave off MRI scanning of the pituitary gland when diagnosing these conditions until they've ruled out all other options. This isn't a Daily Mail-worthy example of NHS cutbacks; it's because small, harmless pituitary tumours are quite common. Finding one on an MRI scan might lead doctors to wrongly diagnose a pituitary condition like TSH-oma or Cushing's disease, when in fact the tumor is not what's causing the problem.*

I knew that things must be reasonably serious when my endocrinologists allowed me to jump the queue for MRIs at the hospital. In fact, I jumped it so completely that the NHS paid for me to have my MRI done immediately at a nearby private hospital, because there were no scanners available at the NHS hospital for a few weeks. It was slightly disconcerting, not just for the speed at which it all happened, but also because I had to travel to the mystery hospital on my own, by bus, to the middle of the countryside. The bus driver dropped me off with another girl who was fortunately also headed for the private hospital, and we were left in a random village with no signposts or map. Eventually we got there, and I heartily thanked the paranoia which had led me to leave home an hour earlier than I needed to.

Before my MRI, I didn't know much about them, apart from the fact that, as the scans work through big old magnets - hence "magnetic resonance imaging" - you have to remove all metal from your body or risk it moving around in the magnetic field; consequently, no pacemakers allowed. I wanted to know what to expect, so I scoured the NHS website and interrogated family members who had already had one. They said: you take off your watch, you lie in a tube, it's loud, you have to stay still, the technician shouts "stay still, damn you!", you leave.

NOW JUST HOLD YOUR HORSES.

An account such as the one above leaves out some crucial information for folk like me. For one thing, I didn't realise that, as it was my general cranial area being scanned, they would trap my head in a box stuffed with cushions to prevent it from wiggling. Then, head duly caged, you slowly roll backwards into the MRI scanner. Anyone who is claustrophobic would not be a fan, although they gave me a panic button which I could beep if I needed rescuing.

In fairness, the staff know that this is a freaky experience and repeatedly asked "Are you ok?". Towards the end of the scan, I also realised that the machine had a reassuring mirror placed just above my eyes, which means that patients can see the MRI technicians at work through a window at the back of the room. Or at least, patients who aren't stupidly and entirely blind without their glasses, like me. I am wildly shortsighted and consequently, even once I had realised that it was a mirror, and even though it was really pretty close to my face, all I could see was pinkish blurs.

The radiography folk gave me some sexy earplugs to wear, to block out the noise of the MRI scanner going mental with magnets. Unfortunately, these kept falling out and, because my head was wedged in with cushions, there was no way of putting them back in. MRI scanners really are incredibly loud, and it's not just the loudness that's the issue - the noises they make are weird and erratic, much like a young Kate Bush. When it all goes quiet, you find yourself tensing in anticipation of the next staccato burst of noise, and when it suddenly starts shrieking in your ears it's pretty tricky not to jump out of your skin, especially if you're pumped up with thyroid hormone and thus pretty jumpy anyway.

The technicians do not like this.

Partway through (the MRI took about 40 minutes, I think) I was pulled out of the machine. My heart leapt - time goes a bit screwy when you're in a weird screaming machine - perhaps it was finished? But no, they just wanted to inject contrast dye into my arm and bung me back in.

I whiled away the time by trying to remember and recite poems in my head. I did "The Jabberwocky" a couple of times, the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, my favourite speech from Macbeth, a couple of poems and odd verses from Siegfried Sassoon, and pretty much anything else I could remember. I was very bored. Pro-tip: learn some new poetry before having an MRI and then take advantage of the time to test your memory.

Anyhow, I realise I may have made my MRI scan sound like a horrific experience** but actually it was totally fine, and I much preferred it to having endless blood tests at the hospital. I admit I was irrationally afraid that there would be a previously unknown bit of metal embedded somewhere in my body that would rip out in a bloody mess.

Fortunately, this did not occur.

________________________________________________________________
*Such tumours are known as "incidentalomas".

**Or I may have just made myself sound like a massive whinger...

My Head Revisited: First Trip to Hospital

I have set this post to appear online at precisely 11.11am on the 11/11/11. If I could define it down to the second, believe me I would. Because I am lame that way. Anyhow. On to the story...

***

In January 2010, a chain of events was set in motion which led to the first of my many trips to hospital and, incidentally, the first time I tried sushi. Of the two experiences, I preferred the latter. From what I've seen, hospital visits rarely come with a side of pickled ginger.

And I love pickled ginger.

Sadly I can no longer remember the date in question, but I think it was around the 18th January; I was back at university and, being a studious and dilligent character, I had spent the entire day sitting in my room reading books about Old English poetry. Consequently, I couldn't quite work out why, ever since I'd woken up, my heart had been beating as fast as though I'd just run for the bus.

At about four o'clock, I used the excellent online stopwatch to work out that my heartrate was around 140 beats per minute. So I decided to do what any sane individual would do when their local doctor's practice is a two-minute walk away. I called NHS Direct.

NHS Direct sent me to the doctors. Feeling like a bit of an idiot, I ambled into the reception, was immediately rushed in to see the nurse (ever wanted to skip the queue? Just develop heart problems!)* and found myself wired up to an EKG, which looked rather like some kind of creepy mechanical chest octopus. I sat there for a few minutes and the nurse agreed that yes, my heart was rather speedy. Then I was sent to a doctor, who took a look at the creepy mechanical chest octopus printout and agreed that yes, my heart was indeed rather speedy.

So the doctor sent me to the hospital. My very nice college booked and paid for the taxi to take me to A&E and I grabbed my very nice friend Cherry to accompany me.

"Heart problems" is one of those magical phrases that gets you rushed through A&E much faster than, say, a mere broken bone or accidental breadknife incident - although of course it does mean that, as an entirely healthy-looking young person, you're liable to get a few evils from the folk who've been waiting there, oozing gently, for an hour.

Once I went through to see a doctor, the fun really started. Immediate assumptions were that either:

1) I must be having a panic attack.
or
2) I must have taken some kind of exciting illicit substance.

I think that option 1 was rapidly discounted due to the carefree nonchalance with which I munched my way through a packet of McCoys** and giggled as the doctor on duty made me blow through a small tube and massage my neck in an attempt to get my heartrate down. Of course, no matter how many times I insisted that option 2 was not an option, they refused to believe me.

Eventually they admitted defeat and sent me deeper into the hospital, where I got a whole bed to myself. Yay! I had a smorgasbord of blood tests and was wired up to another heartrate monitor which, annoyingly, was set to beep frantically any time my heartrate went over 140bpm. As it spent the whole time hovering around the 140 mark, this quickly got extremely irritating.

Cherry kindly volunteered to read aloud my book of translated Old English poetry to me, which resulted in her learning quite a lot of new and exciting vocabulary, like "seraphim", "fetters", and "vassal". Quite inexplicably, she lost interest only partway through a poem.

I sat in the hospital, waiting for my blood test results to come back, until about 11 o'clock at night. The doctors weren't sure whether I'd have to stay overnight, and so Cherry, as well as looking after me very well, (although I can never forgive her lack of interest in Anglo-Saxon literature) also had the fun job of phoning my parents and boyfriend, to let them know what was going on.

Finally, late at night, having had no dinner, it was announced that all my blood tests had come back fine, they had no idea what the hell was wrong with me, and that I should go home. If my heartrate was still fast in the morning, I was told to go back to the doctors.

It was good to be able to phone my parents and reassure them that I was not on death's door, but attempting to go to sleep with a heartrate of 140 is virtually impossible, and I was not reassured when, the next day, the doctor incredulously asked me "they let you go home from hospital with a heartrate of 140 and no medication?", with a look of horror on his face.

But more of that at a later date...

UPDATE: Click here to read my next post about getting a diagnosis. Or click here to go back and read more about my initial symptoms.
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*N.B. This doesn't work as well in the supermarket.

**Incidentally, I hadn't noticed until recently that McCoys advertise themselves as "man crisps". WTF. Seriously, are their marketing team like five years old? Wikipedia, my one true love, tells me that McCoys are, and I quote, 'promoted by United Biscuits*** "as the only overtly male-targeted crisp brand"'.  Don't believe anyone would say something that stupid, let alone base an ad campaign around it? Here's the website.

***Words fail me.