We got a taxi from the house to the bus station at the town centre, then the Ember bus to Dundee. It’s a very civilised way to travel and for oldies like us, an economical one too. Once there we went for a coffee and something to eat before we got the bus that would take us to Ninewells Hospital. It was a round trip on the bus. The journey to the hospital was a long trip all round the houses and the one back was a much shorter one.
The meeting went well. The doctor was really nice and went over what was going to happen in detail. Then he got Scamp to sit facing him with her hands, palms down, on her knees. Then he got her to lift her hands to about shoulder height, palms down again. Then she was to turn her hands, palm up and then hands at shoulder height, palms facing and finally with middle fingers touching.
Next he had her touch index finger to thumb with both hands, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Next test was touch her index finger to her nose with her left hand, then with her right hand. She had to do it a few times. Then he asked her to touch her outstretched index finger to his, once or twice with one hand then the other. Finally he asked her to open her mouth and close it two or three times.
He took her to another room, I wasn’t invited, and got her to walk a straight line in a corridor, then back again. Finally he got her to do the same thing, but this time doing ‘toe, heel’ like you see the cops do on the old films, and that was about it.
He seemed really surprised to discover that she only had the tremor on one hand, he was expecting to see evidence of it in her ‘good’ hand, but there was none.
He told us that he thinks Scamp would be a good subject for the ‘MRI Guided Focused Ultrasound Thalamotomy for Essential Tremor’, but she is unlikely to be put forward for Deep Brain Stimulation. He did say he may give her a course of Parkinson’s medication to see if that would reduce the effects of the tremor, but admitted it’s unlikely to work. It doesn’t look like she will get another appointment until the middle of next month at the earliest, but that would be a consultation with himself and the surgeon. She told him that we were hoping to go away for a couple of weeks in the summer and he said that wouldn’t be a problem.
All in all, we were happy with the meeting, although afterwards we remembered all the other questions we wanted answered, although he had covered most of them.
The day was horrible outside. By the time we were coming out of the bus from the hospital, it was cold, horizontal rain. We went into the V&A to be warm, and then walked back to get the bus home. We were both shattered by then. Maybe it would have been better to do an overnight in Dundee and come home refreshed next day, but I think Scamp just wanted to get back home.
Despite the weather, I did get a few photos taken. The best of them was a view through the archway under the V&A.
Tomorrow will probably be a day of working out what happened on Monday!