Here's the news from my long-awaited appointment at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital's Assessment Unit in central London. In short, the decision is not to make a decision.
Yet.
Not helped by the fact that the CT scan I had done locally in Chelmsford and in double-quick time back in June, specifically to provide more evidence for today's consultation, hasn't arrived at the RNOH yet. You could have glued the report to the shells of a convoy of snails, and it would have made it from Chelmsford to London by now... Just another example of the terminal incompetence of the NHS over the simplest of administrative jobs.
Am I incandescently furious about the waste of my time and money going to this appointment when the basic information needed for it hasn't been delivered in time? I'm trying to hide it, but you can guess... Not to mention the waste of consultant time.
However, it was not a complete waste. I had a couple more X-rays done. Consultant thought there was a possible suggestion of some new bone growth since the last X-rays done in May, but I couldn't see it. But what he did spot, and no-one else has commented on for the May X-rays or any earlier imaging, is a perfectly clear small fracture of the acetabulum (socket) of the hip joint - see the image (it's not my pelvis, it's an image I found online!) The green dots show the socket, the area outlined in blue is the lesion, which is a fluid-filled cavity where there should be solid bone, and the red X marks the fracture.
Consultant's position is that as I am getting no pain from the hip at this stage although mobility is reduced, and as I've lived with this issue for four years now (while believing that the lesion had largely repaired itself for most of that time) there is no cause for immediate intervention. I replied that even so, the joint is clearly unstable / precarious / whatever and liable to catastrophic failure with another fall or any other incident, and I don't at all enjoy living with the constant awareness that one mis-step or miscalculation of a bit of lifting could be all it needs. On top of the constant awareness that the myeloma might relapse at any time and complicate the issue further. I would want to intervene as soon as possible and get this sorted out rather than wait for it to turn into an emergency without, perhaps, the time to plan and perform the best possible option.
On the subject of "best possible option", consultant thinks that an orthodox hip replacement would be the way to go, although I can't see how there's enough good solid bone there to take one - and that was the view of the orthopaedic surgeon in Chelmsford, and the reason why he referred me on to the RNOH...
Be all that as it may the decision, such as it is, is to wait and see how it goes for another eight weeks, at which time we review, re-image, and re-think. A particular point is whether any pain develops, so I shall keep a particularly close record of that. And wait another couple of months...
Meanwhile, I understand that a crack team of NHS tortoises is at this moment being dispatched towards Chelmsford to collect the CT scan from June and whoosh it (in tortoise terms) towards 45 Bolsover Street...
I have also requested copies of today's X-rays. Needless to say there's a mountain of bureaucracy to deal with, they can't just email the images straight to me, but I hope to have them within a few days. Or weeks. I'll post them when they arrive.
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