After a chiropractor effed up my back in May 2016, my doctors put me on opioids. I was on them for 10.5 months. In that time, I had a three-level lamenectomy in my lumbar. The day after surgery, instead of one leg hurting, both began to do so. We talked to the back surgeon about doing a fusion. But he said to do one, I needed to have an abdominal hernia fixed. So while I went through recovery for that, I went to a neurosurgeon for a second opinion. He sent me to pain management, rhizotomies, epidurals, a shot in my Lateral Femorial Cutaneous Nerve while I was mostly awake, and then in March 2017, he put in a pain stimulator. It works, mostly. I have a paddle embedded in my T-9 and T-10 space, and a battery pack in my right hip. But after three months, I was still, and am still not out of pain. But it was during this time, I began tapering off the opioids. At the height of all the efforts to alleviate my pain, I was on Percocet several times per day, and even had Fentanyl patches. Having gotten myself off of these meds, migraines came with a vengence. My neurologist diagnosed me with "Medication Overuse Headaches." They still come. After giving myself shots once a month sub-Q for migraines, another neurologist is now putting Botox shots into the nerves in my face, head, shoulder and neck that are active when one has migraines. A host of other issues have happened since 2016. I fell in March of 2020 and tore my right rotator cuff. Because I have the pain stimulator under my skin, I can no longer have MRIs. CT scans, even with dye, do not seem to be as effective. Sept. 11, 2020, my shoulder doctor began what he said was going to be a 90-minute surgery. Five minutes in, my BP was bottoming out, putting me on the verge of coding. So a few hours later, I was in the cath lab of my hospital, with my cardiologist saying I had three blockages. Ones that were not there when I saw him for clearance for the initial surgery in August 2016. So Nov. 11, 2020 my shoulder doc went back in for what I'd been saying was my remaining 85 minutes of surgery. Well, it took three hours. In December, my cardiologist went back in, and put in two stents. On Jan. 8, 2021, I was back at the heart ER, my BP 184 over 130 or more. So after another angiogram, I was put on additional meds. Then on June 12, I was walking out to my garage before a severe storm was about to hit, and I stepped on the edge of the sidewalk and went straight to the ground, banging my head. So that required me to go to the ER again and a CT scan. The following Tuesday, I was in my neurosurgen's office because they'd seen my ER film and were concerned about my neck. Right now I need a mylogram (spinal tap to inject dye) and a CT with contrast of my neck because it looks like it's time to get a lamenectomy of my neck vertebrae. But that costs money. I applied for disability with Social Security in May of this year, and for now, they want me to do a psych eval, and be seen by a third-party doc. To this day, I'm still off the opioids, but I'm paying for being on them 10.5 months when there never really was a point in my care plan for getting me off of them. I had to insist on one myself. So I understand your pain. Do I ever. :-) Hang in there. Every day is a step further from where we were....
