en Guate, sin músculos

Well, so much for hoping this one would pass quickly, or without significant weakness. Luckily, I can always get the chapinos to carry my bag up and down stairs, because god knows I can barely carry myself on them. I am thankful that my hotel has good, solid handrails up and down all the steps, because I've taken to stumbling and random leg-collapses again.

Which all sounds pretty crappy, but I'm sort of just accepting. It's easy to say, en ingles o en español, que tengo una enfermedad que a veces me hace débil en las piernas y las manos... and then to just get on with la vida. Really, there is no difference between being sick and weak in the states or in Guate, other than that here everybody is moving so slowly in the heat that unless stairs are involved, I'm actually naturally acclimated to the right pace of life. har.

In other CIDP news, I got a call back from my neurologist just as I pulled out my cellphone to turn it off for the last time as I was boarding my flight to Guatemala City. He told me, quickly, that my spinal tap came back normal, which he seemed to think ruled out CIDP and that now we would have to do a million new blood tests for genetic disorders, and/or he'd refer me to a specialist up in Palo Alto or summat who might know better what to do. I didn't have time to ask any questions, what with the plane taking off for centroamerica, but it freaked me out anew, as you might well imagine.

I have since decided, however, that I do have CIDP still. Screw a normal spinal tap - all the online resources (and everybody knows how reliable the internets are for diagnostic purposes) tell me that elevated protein in the CSF "may" or "often" occurs with CIDP, but none of them say it is necessary, or that normal protein rules out the diagnosis... and at least one patient discussion board mentioned receiving the diagnosis despite a normal spinal tap result. So I figure my doc isn't super-experienced with this disease (something he readily admits) and hasn't been reading the internets as faithfully as me. Also, the more I read about the disease, the more it becomes clear that it fits exactly with my experience. It's not one of those things where two or three bits fit and the rest might just be an unusual presentation or summat, it really seems like what I've got going on.

So. Waiting for the leg strength to come back. A crash of thick rain just passed through, cutting the heat, which is delightful. No longer sweating from every available pore, hurrah! I guess I should try to accomplish my random goals for the day, including braving el mercado in search of a little guatemalan cell phone, and trying to find a converter that will let me plug my three-prong grounded plug into a two-prong slot. hmmmmm... might be difficult. But I want to be able to use my compy in my hotel room, for more than the weak hour that my stupid battery allows.

Hasta pronto, pues.