Wednesday Update: 5/30/07

Well, our trip to Iowa City went well yesterday. Matt had an MRI in the morning, then we met with the neuro doctors in the afternoon to discuss. Basically, the MRI looks ‘good’. And by good, they say that it looks better than the angiogram did last winter. Apparently, the small vessels which still have blow flowing through them now appear smaller than they did in the angiogram. Because the flow is less, the likelihood of a rebleed is less…so we all agreed to follow it a little longer, rather than try and treat it just yet. We had the opportunity to explain just how awful our experience was to the doctor, and it felt really good to lay it out there and just spew about how bad it was. He was pretty wide eyed after that, I think we surprised him with our honesty!! We all decided to repeat another MRI in another 6 months, and see how things look then. If there are changes, we’ll have to discuss treatment…if it appears stable, we may just follow it with repeat MRIs for a while. I think we all felt good with that decision.

Today, we met with the neurologist here in Des Moines to talk about Matt’s tremor medication. We are still not satisfied with the effectiveness of the current meds. So, we are going to wean Matt off of one, to see if there are any effects. Then we are going to see how the next several weeks go, and touch base again in early July. At that time, we have another medication we may try. She explained that there are other classes of medications we could try, but that they have more negative side effects which she thinks would inhibit Matt’s recovery more than the tremor…so we’ll see how things go. Overall, she thinks the tremor is improved, but appreciates how much it drives him crazy at times. She said that his tremor is one of the most difficult types to treat, naturally. Why does it seem that all of Matt’s ‘issues’ are so difficult to treat? Sheesh. We trust her judgment though, and will work together with her guidance to treat the tremor.

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