Re: Dr's Visit
From: Pam Markford (PJtweetyRn@aol.com)
Sun Jun 18 02:53:59 2000
At Sat, 17 Jun 2000, Misty wrote:
>
>Hello everybody,
>My name is Misty I have only posted once and that was last week and I
>finally went see my general surgeon and I thought i'd post and let you
>know what he said.
>
>He gave me three options:
>
>Live with the pain and do nothing (so unfair)
>Or
>he can do the surgery which he has only performed a few times. He has
>done this surgery a few times with interceed and seprafilm, I already
>had the seprafilm surgery which failed horribly. He said basically the
>Interceed will probably fail as well.
>or
>I can goto a pain med clinic at Ohio state University and learn how to
>control the pain.
>
>I had the lysis of adhesions surgery about a year before I had the
>hysterectomy, with the seprafilm and that failed which in turn led to my
>hysterectomy. I do feel better since I had the hysterectomy but my
>adhesions came back worse than to begin with. So my choice is to goto
>the pain clinic and see what they can do for me. Now at pain clinics do
>they teach you how to live with the pain, or do they just find the right
>combo of meds to help with the pain?? I was in ER today because of this
>pain and the only thing that really helped with the pain was demerol.
>They sent me home with some vicodin, but only 12 tabs of that. The
>narcotics do help and they help alot, but I do not want to become
>dependant on them. Forgive me if this email doesn't make any sence, i'm
>doped up on demerol and vicodin and my thought process is a little
>cloudy. What has been other peoples experiences with pain clinics??
>does it work??
>
>--
>Misty
>
>--
>thank you for listening,
>Misty hoffman
>
--
Dear Misty: First let me make it clear, our hearts go out to you . We all unfortunately know what it is like to be in this painful stituation! I myself have been down that road not once but twice. I would strongly suggest that you do follow through with getting a work up at the pain clinic, and find you a specialist that you have a good relationship with. Then you will be able to concentrate on the underlying cause of the pain and what further plan of action you need to resume! Only you can make the decision about what interventions are necessary for the amount of pain that are experiencing at this time. The pain clinic will not only be able to prescribe medications,but will also teach you tehniques needed to cope with chronic pain. I have had to use these stratagies myself. You will need to keep yourself as comfortable as possible to make an educated decision. If you go onto Yahoo then go to task bar and put in DR. Jay Redan or Dr. Harry Reich you will start to do the research that you will need to familiarize yourself with .I went to the Pain Management Program out of a hospital. This program used numerous intervention. Some of them were relaxtion techniques, gentle stretching exercersizes and then finally epidural steriod injections to try to calm down the inflammed nerve areas that were causing the piano. I went as far as having back surgery, which was done for the purpose of cutting nerves for the purpose of stopping the transmission of the pain signals. This lasted temporarely, however and then I had to deal with the severe dissapointment that this wasn't going to be a permanent answer. I felt like that brought us full swing back to the very begining all over a again. My family has also felt the strain of the whole ordeal. Everyone of us has to decide what pathway we will take in order to become able to function in society with some kind of quality of life. I have also learned that we have the hope that as of now the adhesions can be treated and preventative measures are available. We now have this wonderful forum enabling us to request, find ,& research. Please feel free to write to me if there might be anything else that I can be of service to you about . Please take care and you will be in our prayers. In Friendship, Pam Markford PJtweetyRN@aol.com