Ron's impatient. Who can blame him? Becoming hemiparetic was bad enough after his accident. He asked me about it as he recovered. I did some reasearch and told him "Well, if you don't see it by 6 months you probably never will". He didn't like it but 6 months came and went over 6 years ago. I figured it was far better for him to know his prognosis than to have a horrible crash a few years later.
I've treated the whole "Sensory Peripheral Nerve Disease" thing pretty much the same. When Ron asks me when he'll get better, I tell him "We don't know, you may recover, you might not. Nerves are funny and don't have a whole lot of capacity to regenerate. I think it'll be a longer process than you'd like at best."
He hasn't liked hearing that, and has requested that I do more research, but everything comes up the same. He might get better, he might not.
Recently he'd been asking me to find him a new doctor, one who could give him a pill or something and help him recover. "What if I only have a limited window of recovery and I'm missing it!" he fretted. I told him, all his tests have been rule-out, we know his diagnosis (PND) and it's going to take a while to see results.
Last night he got frustrated and called the hospital. He began by saying he'd been in and out of the hospital after a toxic reaction to Bactrim (in Bactrim's defense, he took the generic), had many expensive tests, all he had was a diagnosis of "PND" and he wanted a doctor who could fix him. He added my comments, that I say either the nerves will get better or they won't, but there's nothing a doctor could do that hasn't been done.
After a few gasps and a few transfers, Ron spoke to the "Head Nurse". She listened thoughtfully to him and gave him a priceless reply.
"Sir, you need to listen to your wife. I hate to say it, but she's right."
Can I get that on a prescription? :-)
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