Daily Log #6 (Doctor Visit)

It was an interesting day today. My youngest son stayed home from school today with a sore throat so my routine was thrown off a little, but I also had a post-op follow-up appointment with my orthopedic doctor.

He's a pretty good doctor in my opinion. He is one of those guys who tries to exhaust all other possibilities before resorting to surgery. This usually means that the doctor is very interested in finding the cause of the pain rather than go for the easy money and throw the patient on the operating table.

There wasn't much done today in the way of making any new progress. He asked if my pain was any better and to compare it with what I felt before surgery. To be honest, I had to tell him that I feel worse. My overall pain is worse and some of that is because I'm still healing from the surgery. Other than that I have pain in all the same places as before except that I don't have the pain shooting into my toes anymore. That doesn't mean much because I still have the pulsating pain going down the back of my leg into my heal.


He basically told me that for everyday you have chronic pain before surgery I could expect two days recovery time after, which means it would take three to four years to feel the full benefit of the surgery. That may be true, but I should be feeling a lot better at this point than I am and he had to agree with that.

Even though the MRI and CT scans didn't show anything wrong with my hip joints, he thinks that giving me an injection of steroids in my hip will help reduce my groin pain. I had that same injection last spring and it didn't do anything at all. He thinks that maybe now the injection will work better because my back is now fused. I can tell he has no idea what to do now. They operated on the obvious thing and that was to fuse the L5-S1 joint because there was practically no disk left in there and I had bone-on-bone irritation. Now that it's obvious that I don't have the relief he'd like to have seen by now, he doesn't have a clue about what to do next.

My next step is to see a Pain Management MD and see what options I have for dealing with the pain. Maybe he'll be able to come up with something better. My appointment is next week so I'll write an update afterward.

The last thing we discussed was medical marijuana. I'm a religious guy and illegal drug use is a big issue for me, but marijuana isn't illegal in California. The other thing that bothers me is the stigma associated with using it. The last thing I want is people putting me into the "pot head" category, but if I can have a better quality of life while using a safer method than what I have now then I'd be STUPID not to at least consider it. The doctor does not prescribe it, but he was very candid about its benefits. He said it is far less damaging to my body than the pain pills. I won't build up a tolerance to it like I will the pain pills. There's not a possibility of overdosing it like there is with the pills. So the only real downside is IMAGE.

He said that I don't have to roll joints and smoke it to get the benefits so that's a plus. So the only thing between me and more effective and safer pain relief is how it will look to others. I'm going to seriously consider this and when I see the pain management doctor I'm going to ask for his opinion. So there is something else I'll have to report on next week.

My last statements for this evening have to do with a phone call from my oldest son this evening. I guess he read some of these blogs or the posting I put on my FaceBook page referring to the blog and he got really worried about me. I know it's scary when I see my father aging and I worry about him. That's part of life's endless cycle I guess. Although I don't want to frighten my children, or any of my family members and friends, his serious reaction is a perfect example of what I want other people to come to understand...

This is a very serious situation.

People with chronic pain have a very hard life and just because we paint on the best face we can, tell everyone we're having a good day, and hide what we feel doesn't lessen our suffering any. We say and do what we do because we don't want to heap our burdens on your shoulders and because we know that if we tell you the truth you won't be able to digest it. Unless you personally go through this experience you'll never come close to knowing what it's like when you know there may not be an end/cure in sight.

All we really want is for you to believe us and take our word for it. In so many cases there is no good explanation for what's happening to us, but we need you to believe we're suffering. We need your support. Maybe even more than we need pain relief because with out your support the rest of life can seem very pointless.