More Clarity

Today I had an appointment with the Neurology Clinic (accompanied by Jan, as always you can have whispered conversations about me). We had a wide-ranging discussion about my history and development of my “issues”.

One big thing I noticed is that there is a new (to me) category called MCI, Mild Cognitive Impairment, between normalcy and dementia. I think that that describes me much better. See the posters below.

One of the things discussed are activities to keep the mind agile and engaged. Things like puzzle books, Wordle, classes at Casper Community College, etc. etc.

I brought up what Sis told me about the longitudinal studies of dementia at Mayo Clinic. He was familiar with it and the local status is that the spinal tap for protein fragments was established last year. The blood serum test should be available in February or so, but so far they haven’t got the correlations available to evaluate the results. (probably next year it will be widely available). If you have the protein fragments they follow-up with a PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scan.

So, the plan of treatment is:

1. Get a blood test at the doctors office (dropped in this afternoon
2. Get an EEG at the Neurology Office (tomorrow)
3. Have a spinal tap (lumbar puncture) at the hospital downtown (waiting for scheduling to call)
4. Get a MRI at the hospital downtown. Scheduled for Wednesday Jan 8th.

From the above schedule you can see one of the attractive items about Wyoming health care – 3 out of the 4 items, that were identified this morning, have been scheduled this week. Picture if this were in California or Portland, OR.

I will provide an update to this towards the end of the week to provide more information.