Sarcoids & Skiing: The Sequel

Blimey, well where to start with the latest update of the saga that is becoming the Sinead and Sam partnership!

First off – the Sinead half of the calamitous pair! For those that have read all of this blog (and I am sure I should create some kind of medal for you) you will know that when I first got Sam I was recovering from my first operation to rebuild my knee following a nasty ski accident. Since then I had a second operation six or so months later and had hoped that that was that. But seeing as this is me this was unfortunately not the case. Early summer my physiotherapist noticed that I had a funny lump that had developed to the side of my knee. After much prodding (which was bloody painful) she realised that one of the screws that had been put into my knee was actually sticking out slightly. Very Frankenstein! As a screw poking out your knee never helps much with getting the old riding boots on it was decided I needed another operation to whip it out. So two weeks ago I went under the knife again (although sadly this time with no morphine) and had the offending piece of metal taken out. After one or two abortive attempts to restart riding ASAP I have realised that my body doesn’t recover as quickly as I would like so I am taking another week off in order to let the whole thing heal. But it turns out that the delay works well with same because …

His sarcoids have gone into overdrive – one suddenly got much larger and a new one has grown between his legs (see lovely photo below).


So I had the vet out this morning and she says that they are all nodular sarcoids although one may be semi occult (have a look at this website for explanations - http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/sarcoid/). She has ringed the two larger lumps which basically entails putting a tight rubber band round it to stop the blood supply. This means the thing will ultimately pop out – you really don’t want me to go into detail on this one as the vet was pretty graphic and it is pretty gross (blurck). This approach gets rid of the majority of the mass and then we need to use a chemotherapy cream that will hopefully get rid of the rest of the horrible things. I have sent off my application to a professor at Liverpool University who has developed the cream and it should be on its way in a couple of weeks. The professor is the UK expert on sarcoids and the cream his team develops (different formulations depending on the circumstances) are the best solution that exists at the moment to sort out sarcoids. It seems that no one, not even the Liverpool team, know precisely what causes sarcoids – hence the cream is the best option but is not 100% effective. So fingers crossed. Sam is going to take the week off as well to get used to the elastic bands and he already seems to be getting into the swing of eat, sleep, eat, sleep. Although come to think of it my regime is pretty similar, just with a whole load of work in the middle!