A possible diagnosis

Harry's visit to the doctor's office yesterday was well worth the trip. The doc gave him a thorough Q & A session and exam, and he was given a possible diagnosis that we're working with until all his labs come back from all the blood they took yesterday. It's called Lateral Femoral Cutaneous Nerve Syndrome or Meralgia Paresthetica. Basically, it's kind of like a pinched nerve that causing a tingling, burning, painful sensation on the top, outer part of the thigh.

Unfortunately, a known cause for this disease is diabetes. We'll know more once the labs come back. Harry has pretty much said that he thinks at some point in his life he will be diagnosed with it, but I'm still hoping he's wrong. Especially when he says something like, "If it's diabetes, you and I are going to be fighting an awful lot. I'm not going to live on rabbit food the rest of my life" to which I replied, "I've cut most of the sugar out of my diet this week, and I'm not eating rabbit food." He insists he can't eat like that. I stopped the conversation before it went any further; there's no point in arguing with him before we've even got a confirmation.

Another cause for LFCN Syndrome is obesity or having a large abdominal area. Harry is not obese, but he does carry all his weight on his torso, mostly around his middle. Even when Harry got down to 160 lbs, he still carried additional weight around the middle. It's just the way he's built (and he should never go down to 160 again; it's unhealthy for him. It only happened before because he was dirt broke and didn't have money for food. This was before I met him.) If losing a little weight will help alleviate the pain, though, I'm hoping he'll agree to that. He's pretty good at losing weight, so maybe this will be an incentive.

For now, the doctor has told him to take Aleve in the morning, and she's given him a pain killer to take before bed so he can sleep. He took it last night and got through the whole night without waking up once. And there's no pain (at least, not the kind that normally woke him 2-3 times a night).

She's going to call back with the lab results as soon as she gets them, and he's to call her back in 5 days to let her know how the pain meds are working.

What I found interesting is that a lot of times, this disease is misdiagnosed. The reason why this doctor thought of it after Harry's exam is because she actually has it, too. Looks like he lucked out getting her yesterday instead of his regular primary care physician.