lucaspa said:
Are you partially paralyzed or suffer from parasthesia (loss of sensation for anyone else reading this)? Nailing that nerve root would have had some disastrous side effects, including your recurrent pain.
I've always had loss of sensation in my right foot and ankle, and running up my leg, so that would be the sciatic nerve, correct? I had weird senstaions a little like what my amputee friends describe when they speak of phantom pains, only they have never made sense. For instance, before the injection, I felt as though both my legs were pinned under an extremely heavy beam.
Although I've never felt that since, for many years my right foot has felt like it is curled inward, but when I look at it, it's straight.
Since the fusion surgery, I've lost quite a bit of sensation, but the surgeon told my father in the hearing of a friend of mine who was in medical school that he had cut some nerves and that it was my elder Southern father's job to inform me that I would never sexual feeling again. It's a good thing my friend was there, because my father reacted by turning and heading out the nearest exit.
Fortunately I have regained more feeling than he believed I would but I have numbness in my right buttock, pubic area, upper right thigh and I have a pins and needles sensation runing between That thigh and my knee, and my knee also gets numb.
I haven't been online as much because I'm losing my ability to sit, which is an activity (I never thought of it as an activity until I fell, but it is) I have worked so hard to maintain.
If I don't wear high top boots or an ankle splint, I will fall because my ankle quits without warning, and when I sit for too long, my whole leg is likely to fail me.
I have some muscle atrophy in my right calf and my ankle no longer responds at all when tapped. If I am sent to physical therapy and they stimulate my back with the electrical dealie (it's not a tens, that didn't work at all, but I can't remember what it's called), then my ankle will repond again to the neuro test and I get around better, but not for long.
I've been getting steadily worse as time has gone on, but gradually, until about a year ago, when I began to lose function rapidly and the pain increased at a fairly dramatic rate, too.
I'm also losing muscle function, and other muscles which still work are doing their best to take over jobs they weren't designed to do, and that's becoming painful. I'm even having a mild incontinence problem now, and it's a struggle now to cough productively.
I've had muscles spasms and charley horses in my right leg for years, but now lots of my muscles spasm and cramp.
My doctor says the arthritus in that area is getting worse because of my age. She looked at me sadly ans and said quietly, "Well..we knew this would happen." and I nodded. Talks of wheelchairs and canes insued.
While my neurologist (
"You rive arone?? Is not good to rive arone! You Amelicans: so ronery, no famiry; you need husband!"--gosh I miss him! LOL) slaved away try to get me a neurosugeon, my sad primary care doctor was beating the bushes for an orthopaedist!
They both tried so hard, Paul , and I feel sorry for my one remaing doctor; all she can do is medicate me, and she's not free in this state to give me adequate pain medication and do massage (she's D.O. and a pianist, so her massages are pretty great!) .
All her patient rooms have the walls covered with posters and such showing of smoking, but when she asks how much I'm smoking now, and I answer "Three packs on bad days.", she just nods sadly and writes it down in my chart.
I know this must sound stupid, but I do feel bad for her.
Ah, your herniation was actually a fracture!
Once I learned about discs, it didn't seem to me that it was possible for nucleous palposus material to shatter, but they never used the term "farcture" or explained. Any of them. My chymo guy had no motivation to: he charged the same amount of money as he would have for a laminectomy.
I don't think my sencond surgeon would have wanted to use a term like that to a patient who was already scared and in trouble. The third wasn't a people person, as the post-surgical anecdote abobe illustrates. LOL
He didn't anything well except for his very strong feeling that no patient of his would ever go go on SSD. My primary care physcian at the time, said I most certainly had to, and that he would win the fight and he did.
Herniation, as I'm sure you are aware, is when there are cracks in the annulus fibrosis and the nucleous palposus shoots thru the crack.
For those of you not burdened by medical words. The disc between the vertebrae is in the shape of a flat donut or a washer -- the kind that goes on a bolt or screw. The outer ring is the annulus fibrosis and is composed of a type of cartilage called fibrocartilage. It is tough and its purpose is to hold in the nucleous palposus, which fills the hole in the center. The nucleos palposus has the consistency of very thick jelly. It is what really resists the compression of the spine, but in doing so it wants to spread out, thus it being held in by the nucleous palposus. Over time, cracks develop in the annulus and the nucleous palposus oozes out. If it hits a nerve root, then you get pain -- LOTS of it.
Great explanation and LOTS of pain is right, no matter what part of the disc is pressing.
OK, so instead you had part of the annulus actually broken with little hard pieces of cartilage out there to provide mechanical irritation and inflammation.
Yes, lots of irritation and inflamation to this day. I fell ove a kid's bicycle and it's way worse now'
1. Either it got broke in the fracture, or they needed to remove it in order to get enough exposure to pick out all those little pieces.
2. Too bad you rejected the donor bone. I'm surprised they didn't use iliac crest autologous bone for the fusion.
I sure wish he had, especially since I was instructed to dontae my own blood to myself, but had no money to do so, so I came home short. My medical student friend was in her third or fourth year by that time, and I could tell she was anxious. She came over every day and she bought me a room air condtioner, even though she was on a shoestring budget.
A few year later she told me wryly that the use of doner bone was perhaps too experimental. then she told me that she knew of seven other surgical patients of his who rejected their donor bone. She also expressed the concern that a little of it might still be in there, causing occasional bouts of flu-like symptoms which weren't flu.
I doubt there was nucleous palposus left, but now the remaining annulus has probably broken up even more and the pieces are being squeezed out from between the vertebrae. Sounds like you need a Harm's cage in there to keep the spacing of the verebrae, with some rods to help.
The last time I saw my friend she had developed a stiff, but softer, interior back brace and an differnet kind of artifical disc. One of our mutual friends with money and a cool orthopaedist had her flown to Florida and they replaced one of his cervical discs, and when he woke up his hand, which was useless, already had normal function. He was still doing fine after three years, but I would happily go with the harm's cage and rods!!! After the fusion surgery, I'm all for tried and true methods!!
You know, you can get used to a lot of pain over time, but it's getting to be too much. I can almost never drive; the simplist things are getting pretty difficult to accomplish, and I'm fatigued all the time without being able to get enough sleep. Chronic pain is tiring.
I still have a good life, but I want to remain independent. I have three dogs who entertain me, give me a reason to get out of bed, they're so much fun. I can't take them to a nursing home, though, and my 1800 books aren't going to fit, so I want to live on my own.
I don't need a miracle cure I just need some improvement, and not a lot, either.
If I had some reduction in pain, could go see my dad once a week, walk a dog now and then, know that I could usually get to the door to answer it, then I'd be one happy camper!
I haven't left my apartment, except to watch my dogs run around, since last September; my intenet life
is my real life now, and I'm very thankful to have my internet life! I never would have believed that it was possible to make real friends on the internet, but I have!
Some of my schoolteachers used to tell me that I should stop reading science fiction because none of it would ever happen. Even then I knew that prediction was not the aim of good science fiction, but, still, here I am with a computer much like the ones described by Phillip K. Dick.
This is a wonderful time to be a live, expecially if you aren't that healthy!
Don't worry about hijacking the thread. It was pretty finished discussing the original topic.
It could take an upswing! You never know!
In the meantime, I hope we don't make anyone hurl because they aren't prepared. Some people are really squeemish! LOL
I wish that every time I couldn't resist the compulsion to drag a thread off-topic, I learned this much as a result.