Limitations

Everyone has their limitations, and i guess that knowing where yours are is pretty important.

If you don't push your limits, you stay in your comfort zone, but ultimately stay in the same place as you started.

Sometimes limitations are put upon you by the circumstances.

This x-ray defines a few limitations

The poor girl is about 12 and is very very underweight. For some reason she appears to be malabsorbing. She also has a consolidated right lower lung, clinical signs show it to be pretty much solid.

What's going on with her is still any body's guess, at home you could run her through a CT or MRI, you could scope her bowel to look for a cause of the malabsorption, you could run blood tests for SLE, Coeliac or tumour markers, biopsies could be taken and histology reports would be written and treatment plans devised by the MDT.

Unfortunately the limitations of the hospital mean none of these things can be done, she creates the same amount of concern and interest as she would at home, but the prospect of getting to the bottom of her problem may take much longer.

Fortunately we have managed to send some bloods to Australia to rule in/out SLE and Coeliac, but we are still waiting for the results. It could be TB and a treatment trial has been started but there are a few other clinical things that don't fit TB being the only problem.

We are all limited by our experience (or lack there of), our knowledge, our skill and the available medical technology. Unfortunately this may end up limiting this girls chance of seeing old age.