Table damaged? And if so how to fix?

[Matthew Fleming]

Hi,

I'd really appreciate some help with a strange problem. I had to change the size of a column as follows:
alter table patients change MR MR VARCHAR(50);
I did this on my test system without problems. Then I tried it on the production system, and the command never returned. I thought there might be a problem with the indices, and tried "optimize table", but this never returned either. I then dumped the table and tried to import it again (i.e., mysql < dumped) and that never returned. Then I figured the table was corrupted, but both "check table" and myisamchk reported that the table was OK. I dumped the whole database and imported it on my test system and there are no problems with the patients table there.

On the plus side, no data have apparently been lost, but I do need to fix this. Any assistance would be very much appreciated. I've been using mysql for decades and have never seen anything like this.

Thanks very much in advance,

Matthew Fleming, MD
Fleming Dermatopathology