More on the pain clinic.

So again, I have taken kind of longer than is necessary to post about my pain clinic appointments. I have no idea why. I find the whole situation a little depressing. I am frustrated by these new limits; not being able to walk much without pain, stand long without pain, and chairs I used to find quite comfortable I can now get so much pain sitting in. Blah blah – on to the hope and the plans.

I went in last Friday to hear what my pain doctor, Dr. D., had in store. What his treatment plan was for me. I brought Spencer along, for two reasons. 1, so he could hear the whole thing straight from the horse’s mouth and 2, he could ask any questions right then. So Dr. D said that after talking with everyone (pharmacist, therapist, physical therapist), he thought that the headaches were even more of an issue than the back pain. Yes, I said. Well, he believes he can help and would like to work concurrently on the headaches while trying to improve my back. I have my doubts, but I’m game. Of course I spent more than a year at this clinic, trying to help my headaches. There was no improvement, but lots of exploration. Dr. D says he ‘does things differently’ — he would like to try some injections in different parts of my head. Actually sounds a lot like what I did with the last pain clinic doc, but we shall see.

So that’s something I hadn’t anticipated, and while I’m not at all looking forward to the injections (they are incredibly painful), who knows? It just might help.

The plan for my back is this; start out with physical therapy and possibly onto injections (more?!). The problem appears to be two-fold, there is the herniated disc and in the same region, problems with my facet joints. I’m still reading up about this and learning what they are, what is wrong with them, etc. But they are at least part of the problem. How big a part remains to be seen. There are more options (which we discussed) for after PT and injections — implants and other scary type things. Those are off in the future if we can’t find pain relief from the PT and/or injections.

Sorry if this is rambling and/or doesn’t make sense – I slept poorly (again) last night.

His other thoughts about my headaches were…not impressive. My husband mentioned he seemed a little overconfident. I think that’s supposed to inspire confidence, but sometimes doctors actually make me feel less confident about their capacity to help. Also, the winking? What the heck. Ok, so his thoughts were that my medicines were that they were ‘random’ and that there were some that aren’t doing anything and we should discontinue some. Wellllll, subject the first, I feel like maybe he’s forgotten that he’s jumping into a 5 year ongoing situation. This isn’t new, and the reason the meds seem random are that they’ve been added by different doctors – most of them treat symptoms of the problem (nausea, sleep and pain) and not the problem itself BECAUSE we have tried so many preventative meds without success. The few that I’m on now actually help me. I just got off half a dozen meds that weren’t helping me. Pfft. I’m sure we’ll have more discussion on that later.
So then this last Tuesday I went to my first PT appointment. I like my physical therapist, she’s nice and she realizes that I have some idea of what’s going on. I have dealt with the back pain for a long time, and I feel like she understands the importance of my symptoms as well as my limitations. That said, we had our first session and she taught me a few very gentle stretches. I mean gentle, easy. I’m supposed to do them three times a day. After I got home from my PT session, my neck and upper back was hurting. Also, the headache across the back of my head (tension HA that goes with my back hurting) was worse. But I figured that maybe I just needed to keep at it and things would improve. This turned out to be wishful thinking, and a day and a half into it, I was still dealing with this extra pain. No relief; extra pain. Soooo I called and left a message for her Thursday, she hasn’t returned it yet. I decided on my own to discontinue the stretches and hope the extra pain would at least go away in time for my *next* appointment, this coming Tuesday. My neck still hurts quite a bit.

That’s it! That’s my update!

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On a COMPLETELY unrelated note, have you seen the Droid (phone) commercials? I’ve only seen a few hundred. They are pretty good, as far as cell phone commercials go. I was going to put a video in,  but I can’t find one that includes the section I’m talking about. At the VERY very end, in tiny print at the bottom of the screen, it says that Droid is trademarked by Lucasfilms. Lucas trademarked the WORD droid. That is pure awesomeness. Do you think that means they are getting royalties from the sales of the Droid?

Wow.

I’m totally impressed by that.

Filed under back pain/problems, headaches, nonsense, randomness | Comments (5)