After years of back issues, four surgeries and walking a tightrope for years on how much pain I can "take" before having to resort to pain medicine, I went to a pain management specialist for the firt time on Wednesday.
In short, there are a number of options, from new oral medicines and a regimen of medicines that would give me at least some relief around the clock, to installing electrical stimulation probes Or a pain medicine (morphine) pump in the spine against the spinal cord for direct intervention of the pain.
He has started me out with the basics, a new pain medicine system that will be working on my pain at least a little bit, all day long, with occasional supplementation with other medicines on those particularly troubling days.
Today is my first day to try it, but I was totally without medicine before seeing him, and my back had begun to hurt so much that last night and today I've been taking the new stuff, just trying to get the pain back down to a manageable level.
So in a few days when I've had time for the meds to bring my pain down to tolerable levels, THEN I can begin to try to see if this new routine is going to give me a more sustained and measurable daily lessening of the pain.
Hopefully all this time of riding a wild roller coaster of low to high and back and forth pain levels will transition into a gently rolling landscape with better overall pain management that will allow me to start enjoying life again.
But I feel a whole lot better just knowing that there are still a number of good options for me.
I won't bore y'all with the details; besides, some folks have a great fear of pain medicine and freak out when they hear which particular meds they give for chronic pain.
At any rate, I'm feeling more hopeful and more optimistic about my situation than I have in a long, long time.
5 comments:
I'm glad there are some new options. Everyone else I talk to is just given vicodin and told to lump it.
Thanks for posting on my blog. It looks like we were "introduced" via Notes in the Key of Life. Anyway, I know that I really don't know much about you or your pain, but you should just deal with it...I'm kidding. Seriously, there's a man in my church who went through a long, long (7 years?) ordeal with back pain. He was an elder in our church and an attorney who basically had to drop out of life for 7 years. If you're interested, you might listen to him as he addresses our church back in July. Go to this link:
http://www.gfcavon.org/Sermons/
default.htm
(make that one line)
If you're ever interested in contacting him, I'm sure he'd be interested in reaching out to you.
I look forward to reading your blog.
BD (Roger)
I read about the morphine pump, but right now it's a little extreme for me. I've still been able to use OTC stuff. On the really bad days I end up taking too much Ibuprofin.
Good luck.
I know people who have done this (specialist in pain management) and had good results--esp. with the electrical stimulation. Keep us informed about how it goes. I haven't had your level of problems, but I take a lot of naps on the floor and really watch what I do.
Hopefully, you'll find some relief soon. My pain management specialists were great! It is a matter of trying different things, though.
I had some great success with Neurontin, which is an anti-seizure medication. It took a while because I had to find "my dosage" but the results were incredible, really!!
Hang in there!
Jessica
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