Medical Bulletin

Just a lengthier explanation of why I'm not blogging much lately.

I'm 4 weeks into a 3 or possibly 4 month stay in the National Hospital for Neurology, with severe problems with my nerves meaning I can't stand or walk and have some loss of arm/hand co-ordination and strength too.

Diagnosis is not 100% confirmed but the medics here and at UCH have found a lesion on a bone in my pelvis. They will do a biopsy on this at start of next week and suspect it is a solitary bundle of cancerous cells - a plasma cytoma I think it is called - which is generating proteins into my blood which are attacking my nervous systems amongst other effects. Left untreated this would have proved fatal within under 3 years.

If it is this, it's called POEMS syndrome and can be put into remission by radiotherapy and/or surgical excision. Then my nerves would start to regenerate - a few months for the myelin sheath to regrow (i.e. about same timeframe as my rehab in hospital) but any damage to actual nerve axons may take up to 2 years to repair, so I may be returning to work and political life with some residual walking problems - we won't know until time shows basically.

I'll try to do some political blog posts in due course.