A little of this and a little of that

So a few things have happened these past weeks – I’ve been kind of processing the more important things, and so nothing has been reported on my blog.

First of all, I went to see my neurologist on May 4th. We didn’t change much because I was going to see my pain doctor the next week (and the pain doc and I are working on making changes). My neurologist and I did work out a way for me to have magnesium infusions. I first had magnesium infusions back when I was inpatient at Chicago. What was fantastic about magnesium was that there were no side effects but it entirely took away my headache pain. Fantastic, right? Right. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to duplicate the results with oral magnesium. ANYWAY, back to the infusions. I was hoping I could use the infusions for those tough-to-break migraines.

And so I found myself at the hospital, in the infusion center on the next Monday. And somehow, for some reason, it didn’t work. I went with a normal headache – not even a particularly tough one. Soooo that is probably a no go from now on.

Then Friday the 14th I had my appointment at the pain clinic. I had a horrible night’s sleep the night before and so found myself trying not to puke in the office. The great thing is that I didn’t, and just laid very still.    I wasn’t in the best of moods when my doctor came in (one HOUR later) — but we went onward and upward. We talked more about the RFA procedure, and I asked him where he was with the insurance company. He’s called 4x and said he waited on hold for 20 minutes or more each time. *sigh*

So we talked about where to go from here – he felt like if we went through with the RFA and I got 50% pain relief (best case scenario), we’d still be working on something else to take care of the last half. And so the last resort has arrived. He says that if I were his sister, he’d recommend going the route of the Occipital Nerve Stiumulator. This video explains spinal cord nerve stimulators, which are the same idea. Spinal cord stimulators came first, and then they started to be used for intractable headaches/migraines in the cervical area. We’re working on scheduling a trial, and from there the real decision making will begin. OR it might just not work well enough, in which case some other decision making will have to take place.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

In other news, we just got home from Paris a few days ago. I would’ve loved to have told you about it, but then I also am paranoid and don’t want people finding us and burgling us. So I will tell you now, after the fact. Spencer & I went to Paris – we were there for 9 days. We were able to go because he had a poster at a conference there; and after going to other very fun places in recent months, he has saved up enough frequent flier miles so that my ticket was paid for! Yippee! It was very fun, and I will post pictures/details soon.

Filed under back pain/problems, headaches, meds, migraines, pain | Comments (13)