Dizziness, Fatigue, Nausea, Memory Loss, Incontinence, Back Pain, Weakness In Left Side. History Of Cervical Cancer. Your Opinion?
I'm having a full spinal MRI next week (with contrast) to look for problems there - I've never had my entire spine scanned before. I have already been tested and ruled out for MS, and some other conditions (I can't remember, sorry) and had a blood test yesterday for a number of possibilities but won't get the results for a week. My neurologist says I am a genuine but atypical case and is working with a number of dr's to try and work this out; also I am almost 2,000km from home and don't want to stay too much longer; therefore I could use all the help possible!
Any suggestions you can give me would be very, very much appreciated and I would pass them on to my treatment team.
Thanks so much in advance for your help :-)
XXXXXXX
38 year old female in Australia
I have to say that it would be extremely unusual for you to have a paraneoplastic syndrome going on in a setting of a previously treated malignancy. This is of course assuming that you continue to be in a complete remission.
You have a group of symptoms which is not very specific for one obvious cause. There may be some type of neurologic issue going on and a neurologist will continue to interpret the findings of your imaging studies and possibly will request blood tests as well to help.
If you are still concerned that you may have a malignancy or some recurrent cancer going on you might request a PET scan. This is a special scan which can light up in areas where there is disease activity or cancer. Your oncologist may be ble to discuss this further with you.
One last question I have is - are you under severe stress or do you have some anxiety going on? I ask this because sometimes anxiety can manifest itself in similar ways that you have described here. Just a consideration.
Thanks again for the query. I hope you have found this to be helpful and informative. If you have additional concerns I would be happy to address them.
Sincerely,
Dr. Galamaga