Ughh, that just angers me sooooooooooo much that your docs will not even try to help you manage your pain!! Sorry, but it's really awful that people in REAL pain end up suffering just because other people out there abuse pain meRAB. Okay..so if they are so afraid people might get addicted and so on, then why do pain meRAB even exist? Why were they ever approved in the first place? Of course I am not expecting you to answer this..I am just ranting about how awful it is the way you are being treated.
I would come out and ask your doctors if THEY have ever been in severe, chronic pain. Ask them if they would want to see their spouse, parent, or child living like that...in constant pain.
Okay..so you had a surgery and still have the same pain. Well, unfortunately, this does happen to many people. Surgery is never a total guarantee of pain relief and many times one can end up in worse pain afterwarRAB. Even my spine surgeon told me...my surgery has about an 80% or so success rate, but there was always that chance it wouldn't help me. I also have spinal arthritis, which he also told me that this pain could never be cured from surgery...so I will probably have that pain forever. He was forthright about it all.
After my surgery, I did pretty well until several months out. Then I was suddenly woken up from sleep one night, had to use the restroom...since I was not even half awake..I had trouble getting out of my bed, put my left leg on the floor to get up, and almost fell. I almost fell because I had no feeling at all in my left foot! I couldn't even feel the floor. Then I was really woken up when I felt severe, burning, singing pain all the way down my left leg, it was terrible. Needless to say, I went on for a few months like this, then finally made an appt with my surgeon. He sent me for MRI's right away (and got it approved thru my insurance within 2 hours). I ended up having a lot of scar tissue, which was causing problems, plus a few more disk herniations. I also had either disk material or scar tissue stuck in a lateral recess, which was jamming into my nerve, which caused my sciatica and nurab foot. At the end of that same week, he set me up with his group's PM, and I had a nerve block done, which helped a lot.
Since then, I still keep getting disk herniations as well as now I have worsening facet joint arthritis and some other things. My spine surgeon had told me that I should see his group's Pain Management, but they are more than an hour and 1/2 away from me, which was just too far to have to go there all the time. So I called my local pre-surgery PM office and have been seeing them for quite some time now. Now I take tramadol, lyrica, and soma daily to ease some of my pains. I've been taking some of these for over a year now. I've also had many more ESI's during all this time.
I don't know what to say, I'm so sorry. The fact is..you are a person and you are suffering with pain. IF there is something out there that can ease your pain, then why shouldn't you be entitled to it? Ohhh, ask your doctors if they drink at all...beer, wine, other liquor, etc. If they do, you ought to tell them they can't do that because they might get addicted. Hmmm...maybe you should print out "The Spoon Theory" and give it to your doctors. It was written by a woman with lupus, but it can pertain to anyone with a chronic condition and/or chronic pain. It's a great little story and the author wrote it to give to her frienRAB, etc...to make them think how hard her life is to live with her condition. It's great to give to anyone you know that doesn't understand. There is no way that you should be made to suffer. I'm not saying that you have to take painkillers, who knows, they might not even work either. I've had times where painkillers did absolutely nothing. But you should be given that option...be given the opportunity to try it at least to see if it helps.
