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Just to make life more interesting, as though it wasn’t enough already, my left hand started to swell up gradually. We couldn’t work it out because it didn’t hurt me in any way, it wasn’t hot, it just swelled! At first the OSO thought it was going like my feet. Yes, you may well ask, but my feet had sort of twisted round and become bent. I know it’s quite hard to imagine, but due to my weak muscles not being able to keep my feet in the correct place my tendons had pulled my feet round sort of inwards. It didn’t really matter apart from the fact that they looked odd in that I couldn’t walk anyway. I suppose in actual fact it would have been much more of a problem if I could walk because I would have just kept going round in circles (yes, somewhat similar to the OSO I hear you say!)

Over the years I had been a martyr to my feet.

 I’d had horrid in growing toenails which caused nasty smelly infections, apparently another side effect of Muscular Dystrophy, they often ached and were a  generally a nuisance. When they treated and lopped off some of my manky toenails I asked them if they would cut off my feet whilst they were at it. The boring lot wouldn’t!

Anyway, back to my swelling hand. So if you sort of get the picture Mum thought it may have swollen similar to my feet. My left hand really didn’t get any use at all because I controlled my wheelchair with my right hand so my left hand just sort of sat there.

In the end the OSO decided to take me to the docs. She couldn’t work it out either and sent us to get it x rayed at hospital. That didn’t show up anything either (unlike my brother Roger who’d been x rayed at the same hospital a couple of weeks earlier to be told he had a broken back, my bros were always trying to upstage me! Actually his broken back wasn’t as bad as it sounded and he just had to keep off playing that silly game rugby for a couple of months)

So we went back to the docs with my hand (well I suppose I would have had a job going without it!) and she still couldn’t work it out. So in the end she gave the OSO some antibiotics for me, but not to take them if the swelling didn’t get any bigger, so that didn’t really help at all.

Anyway, a few days later I was having difficulty breathing again because I had picked up a chest infection. You may remember from a couple of blogs ago that I had sorted out where I needed to go to the local hospital if I had such problems.

Well that worked really well and I was admitted to the ward that knew about me and they set about trying to clear my chest infection so I could breathe again. It does help to be able to breathe! There was a really nice doctor on the ward and he really tried to help and talked to me as though I was a real person, not just a person with a problem. He really helped my infection in my chest, but the he spotted my swollen hand and asked the OSO all about it. She told him the story and he said he wanted to get it properly scanned to try and sort out what it was.

As my chest had cleared I was discharged from hospital. It was actually Good Friday I remember this because the OSO and I called in at Tesco’s on the way home to food shop for the weekend. It was dreadful in there, the queues were awful, you would have thought a siege had been announced and no food was going to be available for another six months! The OSO was steaming at having to queue for so long, patience, as you know, is not one of her strong points!

Any road up Easter came and went and I had to go back to hospital on the Easter Tuesday for a detailed scan of my hand. Would you believe it the really nice Doctor came to see us (he had come in on his day off to see how I went on; I have such a magnetic personality, I did find that people often flocked to me!!)

I had the scan and it showed a big mass growing in my left hand, it looked as though I had managed to go and get cancer as well as having Muscular Dystrophy.