13/02/22 Neurologist and semi-fall

 I've had a report from the neurologist. This is the key paragraph:

"I think the probable primary cause for his present symptoms and today’s clinical findings is his multiple myeloma. This condition is known to lead to several neurological complications including peripheral neuropathy, polyradiculopathy and myelopathy."

In other words, he suspects compression of the roots of the nerves entering and leaving the spinal cord between my cervical (neck) vertebrae, and that's why he has requested a "urgent" spinal MRI. Makes some sense to me, and I've suspected nerve compression before. It also suggests that Lenalidomide side-effects may have been something of a red herring.

Last night I went to bed as normal, and woke a few hours later in need of a visit to the bathroom. I got up, negotiated the step between bedroom and landing, did what had to be done, and went back to bed. No problems. Then, when I wanted to get up at 08:30 or so, it all went wrong. Somehow I lost it while trying to stand, and I ended up with my lower half kneeling on the floor and my upper half face-down on the bed. You might think it would be easy from there, but the bed offers little firm to get a grip of. With no small difficulty I got myself to a place where I could get my right hand on the bed-head but even that wasn't quite enough to haul myself all the way onto the bed. Luckily Sue heard me and was able to give me enough help to get that far. An important lesson in the nature of falls - they don't have to bed big and dramatic to cause plenty of problems.

I've got a urine bottle and in future I'll keep it ready to hand so as to reduce risk from nocturnal excursions. This place looks more and more like a care home every day...