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You are welcome to apply any part of this article to your own personal use. Please do NOT publish any part of the article or apply any part of it to any non-personal use without the express written concent of the author.
Greetings from the Downing/Hitchcock household (er, boathold) aboard "Volant,"
Forgive the impersonal general broadcast -- there are just too many of you to send out personal notes right now...
I've been noticing a lump on the back of my left leg just below the knee for 6 months or so. It was getting more noticeable, so when I went in for my annual skin checkup I asked the doctor who should be seen to check it out. He thought it might be a Baker's Cyst, so sent me to an orthopedic surgeon. The orthopedic guy had an MRI done, which showed a benign growth in the sheath of the nerve running down the back of my leg. So the orthopedic guy sent me to a neurologist. The neurologist was a bit surprised at the very unusual MRI results, but felt that the growth was close enough to the surface that he could remove it and, if it turned out to be in the nerve sheath, he would be the right guy to treat it.
So yesterday (Friday) at 5:30A.M, I checked in to the hospital for a quick in-and-out surgery under local anesthesia (with some la-la-juice to make me a bit more comfortable) to remove the growth.
For the good news... it isn't any form of cancer.
For the bad news... it turns out to be (I hope I got this right, as I was still in a bit of a fog when it was explained to me) neurofibroma. This disease usually is a result of a nerve injury, although I don't recall any kind of injury there. Apparently the fibers in the nerve try to make new connections to bypass the injury, creating a tangle of nerve fibers growing every which way and never making a connection. This is a bad thing.
The neurologist thinks it should be removed. I think the only way is to clip the nerve both above and below the neurofibroma and take out the bad section. If it is a sensory nerve, then I will loose some feeling in parts of my left leg; I can live with that. If it turns out to be a motor nerve then I will loose the ability to move my left foot -- which will leave me with few choices, none of them easy.
Again, I was still under the effects of the la-la-juice when he explained it all to me, so this might not be 100% accurate.
I will meet with the doctor on Tuesday in his office to discuss the options and have a more complete explanation of what's going on. Probably he'll have to go in again (probably local anesthesia and not so much la-la-juice) with proper test equipment to determine what kind of nerve is involved, and to determine the full extent of the problem.
I'll probably will send out another general broadcast a day or two after meeting with the doctor to keep you all posted. Hold good thoughts.
Take care,
Capt. Edmund "Bear" Downing
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