Chronic Pain Sucks

I don't often use this blog to discuss personal issues. I am a pretty private person, and talking about myself is actually uncomfortable for me.


However.


I suffer from chronic pain. A lot of people do. And if you really want to see some interesting chronic pain numbers, look here.


There are many, many causes for chronic pain. Mine is due to a ruptured disc in my neck



The last few weeks have been pretty miserable for me. I see a pain management specialist (let's call him PMS), taking his prescribed meds regularly, and having occasional epidural steroid injections (ESI). (MY chronic pain stems from a ruptured cervical disc.) I had another ruptured cervical disc surgical fused in 11/08, but this second one herniated just a few weeks after that surgery, and started to bother me about a year ago. The surgeon and the pain management physician both felt it was in my best interest to try to treat the newly herniated disc medically (meaning "nonsurgically") at the time, rather than hitting me with a second major neck surgery so soon after the first.



Anyway, I had been doing fairly well with the prescribed meds and injections until about 3 weeks ago, and something changed (we don't know what, except that the fragmented and herniated disc fragments are now impinging much more on my cervical nerve roots than they had been.) My PMS saw me immediately (bless him!), gave me another ESI, and prescribed some much stronger narcotics, plus a powerful muscle relaxer, in addition to my usual pain management prescription.



The ESI worked for 8 days. And I woke up this morning right back where I was 9 days ago - just absolutely unable to get into a comfortable position due to the pain in my neck and left arm. I have taken all the prescribed narcotics and muscle relaxers that I can (OK - I have taken more than I should have). Up until about 30 minutes ago, I was too loopy to put coherent thoughts together, but these meds have a paradoxical effect on me - rather than making me groggy, or letting me sleep, they make me agitated and hyper - so I can't sleep off the pain - I just kind of walk around the house, or toss and turn on the bed, until they finally take a little edge of the pain, which is where I am now. And I apologize if this post is nonsensical - I am very much MUI (Mentally Under the Influence) from these drugs, and having a really difficult time concentrating. I have some moist heat packs on my neck and shoulder, and decided to sit here and blurt out personal stuff, which is so unlike me, and probably totally not interesting to anyone who is still reading this.



But if you ARE still reading, here is a real gift for you, at least that's how I felt about it.



My friend Pam Brisse posted this on her blog, and I just wish everyone in world could read it. It is so well-written, and offers great perspective on what it is like to live with chronic pain.

[And Pam's blog is a nice read, too - and look at her gorgeous blog banner, while you are over there!]

When I woke up this morning I felt like I had no spoons. After finally getting out of bed (the need to pee overtook the need to stay in bed) and taking some drugs, and writhing around until they started to kick in, I felt like I had 1 spoon - and I used that to feed Bailey. I now feel like I have 4 or 5 spoons, and my heating pads are starting to cool down, so I need to get up to go microwave them again.



I want to give a huge shout out to this microwaveable heating pad that I splurged on about 3 months ago at Bed Bath & Beyond: The Original Bed Buddy Body Wrap. Over the years, I have bought probably 20 different kinds of microwaveable heat wraps, but this Bed Buddy Wrap is the best. EVER. It has a velcro tab that lets you wrap it around your neck, or your shoulder, or a knee, thigh, or whatever, and it will stay there. No kidding - all my other ones fall off or shift if I turn my head or lean forward - I know a lot of you know what I'm talking about. And it holds the heat a long time. And this is a huge plus as far as I'm concerned: it is unscented! All the other ones I have either have lavender, or some kind of herb, or rice - and you heat them up and wrap them around your neck and are smothered in smell. I know that the manufacturers of these wraps consider that to be "aromatherapy", and relaxing, and a big selling point. But when you have allergies, or (like me) fragrance-induced migraines, no thanks. So I am loving my Bed Buddy.

And the Bed Buddy Wrap is available on Amazon, too. I have provided a link over on the right there -------------------------------------------------------------->
to a lot of my recent favorite finds on Amazon.

Good grief, I am really rambling.

I just need little a cheering up today

About 14 months ago I had an ACF - an Anterior Cervical Fusion. Left me with a nice 4 inch long scar on the front of my neck, and a plate in my neck.

I had fallen about 3 months before that - I was trying to relocate some beads from my bedroom, which was getting far too crowded and cluttered, to my actual, designated, fully furnished 900 square foot beading studio - which is just down a long hall from the bedroom, in the bonus room over my garage, and required me to step down 2 whole stairs, carpeted stairs, to get to the room. I just preferred to do all my beading in the bedroom, curled up in my comfy bed, with my TV, and all my remotes, and room for Bailey to sit on the bed and pout while I ignored him.

But I just had too much crap in the bedroom, so I decided to move some beads into the bead studio. And on my first trip, my socked-foot hit the top of the carpeted stair wrong, and my feet flew out from under me, and my ass hit that top step at about 900 miles an hour, and about 9000 pounds per square inch.

And since I was carrying about 8 gorgeous lampwork beads in my left hand, my only thought at the time was "Save the Beads!!!!" - so I threw down my right arm to catch myself, and felt my entire right arm jam up into my neck.

And I was sore for a few days.

And then the neck pain, and the numbness and tingling in my left arm set in.

I waited about 4-5 months, and finally saw my doctor, and had the MRI, which showed the massive disc herniation at C5/6. He told me I could have surgery, or opt for some epidural steroid injections, but I should realize (which I already did, since I have a medical background) that if the epidural steroid injections worked, they were just a short term fix, and meant that surgery was really the only way to fix the issue.

So I had a couple of the injections, they worked, and everyone conferred and told me I had to have the surgery.

Surgery is really no big deal to me (other than paying for it on a struggling beader's "salary"), and the surgeon reassured me with statistics such as "95% of my patients wake up from the surgery symptom- and pain-free, and remain that way."

So I had the surgery in October 2008.

Most folks miss 4 to 8 weeks of work following this procedure - I missed 3 days (4, if you include the day of the surgery). Because I had just bought the bead store, and had (and still have) no employees - so if I wasn't there, the store wasn't open, and that really has a negative effect on getting the bills paid...

And of course, I was one of the other 5% - the tingling and numbness in my arm resolved, but the neck pain, while it kind of changed, and was maybe a little more tolerable, never went away.

When I went for my 6 week post-op visit, I was still having significant pain (and was supposed to be in that 95% having zero pain) - and the surgeon told me that if I was still having pain in 6 weeks, I would need to start Physical Therapy.

And so I became what is known in medical parlance as "lost to follow-op" - meaning I just quit going back. I had suffered from chronic neck pain for at least 17 years by this point, and had been through at least 3 full courses of physical therapy for it, with absolutely NO improvement, and I just didn't feel like ponying up the cash, on my meager beading income, for what I felt like would be a lost cause.

And so my neck pain remained constant, and unchanged - Not as bad as it had been pre-op, but still a pain in the neck, quite literally.

Then about 12 weeks ago I developed what appeared to be a simple case of tendonitis in my right elbow. Tendonitis is usually a repetitive motion injury, and that didn't apply, but all the symptoms fit, so I returned to Orthopedist #1, and he agreed with my diagnosis, and gave me a cortisone injection into my elbow, and instead of making it better, it got worse. And worse.

So I went back to him 8 weeks later, and confessed about the lingering neck pain, and how it was actually quite a lot worse now, to the point where I get frequent headaches, and often can't even turn my head left, right, up, or down, and he ordered an MRI. (of my neck - not my elbow)

He called me today, and told me I have disc herniation at C6/7, with significant impingement on the nerve root, and need to see the neck surgeon again. (Ortho #1 does all ortho surgeries except the neck and back).

I asked him if we could try the epidural steroid injections again instead, and he said sure - and evidently the anesthesiologist who does them was standing there next to him, because they said if I could come to the office in an hour, they would go ahead a give me one.

So I show up, and the anesthesiologist (the pain management specialist) does a full exam, strongly feels that my elbow pain is still your basic garden variety tendonitis and completely unrelated to my herniated disc, but agrees that I need neck surgery - but he'll go ahead and do the epidural steroid injection, both on a therapeutic basis (meaning I'll hopefully get some relief) and on a diagnostic basis (meaning that if my neck pain and/or elbow pain resolve, then he knows they are coming from the disc herniation).

I get the shot, and within 30 minutes the elbow pain is gone.

But my neck pain is now 100% worse. But this is to be expected, from all the manipulating he did in there -

And, on an unrelated note, my best friend died last week from complication of a stroke she suffered 8 months ago.

So I'm sitting here on some pain medication, and having a little pity party - no balloons, but I am eating chocolate cookies (and diet coke!) for dinner, and posting 3 pictures that make me feel better.

Thanks for listening. Enjoy my pictures!