They performed a spinal tap on James yesterday and the preliminary test results came back fine. The full results should be ready in a couple of days. The more technical term for spinal tap is ‘lumbar puncture’. For this procedure, they inserted a needle between two vertebrae in James’ lower back and removed a bit of cerebrospinal fluid. This fluid surrounds the spinal cord and brain to protect them from injury. Think of the fluid as a cushion. A spinal tap, or lumbar puncture, is performed to help diagnose meningitis (infection of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord), encephalitis (viral infection), tumors (lymphoma, cancer), bleeding (subarachnoid hemorrhage, stroke), and autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis.
One of the blood tests that they ran on James revealed that he has something called factor V Leiden. I need to do more research on this, but from what we were told, factor V Leiden is an inherited blood clotting disorder that can increase a person’s chance of developing abnormal blood clots. There are two types of factor V Leiden, heterozygous and homozygous. If a person has factor V Leiden heterozygous, they inherited it from one of their parents; if they have factor V Leiden homozygous, they inherited it from both parents. James has factor V Leiden heterozygous so in got it from either Stacy or from me, but not from both of us. I think Stacy and I will get tested to see which one of us James inherited it from.
