- I asked him about medical marijuana and he didn't think there was any benefit for treating pain, which flies in the face of everything my spine surgeon said and what I've read.
- He immediately said that I shouldn't be taking the Klonopin so he prescribed Savella, which is mainly prescribed to patients with fibromyalgia even though he said he didn't think I had it.
- He wants to focus on what is causing my groin pain so he wants me to do some type of injection in the nerves to see if that stops the pain. If it works then we pursue one direction of treatment, but if it doesn't work then we take a different direction.
- I am going in for X-rays on my upper back to see if there are any spine issues there.
This is, in a lot o
f ways, similar to what I went through with the spine surgeon except here the focus is using medications where the surgeon focused on surgery.It has been a year-and-a-half since the last time I went to work. I have had constant pain for the duration of the time. I have seen doctors from various specialities and all with the same results and now I have to start the process again. I'm on the diagnosis carousel. In the beginning I would be optimistic with each new doctor, but now I find myself being pessimistic.
I am trying to be optimistic that the course we're taking will put me in a better place regarding medications so I won't be taking as much oxycontin and norco, which is what I'm hoping for the most. I could care less about using medical marijuana if these other medications work. Plus they must work in such a way that I don't build up a tolerance to them. I'll give this pain management thing a try and cross me fingers. My body is the ultimate judge.
To change the subject I'd like to make a comment about allowances made for disabled at business' around the area. Unless you find yourself disabled yo never pay attention to the number of handicap parking spaces there are. Now that I am, I can say that there is a lot of poor planning going into this issue. The government has their requirements and business' comply, but the way they carry out the requirements is messed up.
For example: There is a Big 5 Sporting goods store here in Simi Valley and they provide parking for two handicap slots. That's fine because sporting goods and handicap usually don't mix. Sometimes though, I have to go there with my wife to get sporting gear for our boys because I know more about that equipment than she does. So we drive there and park in the handicap because the other ones aren't open. You say, "Wait a minute. You can park in the handicap slot, but you don't want to use it?" With this store the brilliant person who laid out the parking has the handicap spots on the side of the building while regular slots are right out the front door. So a handicap person has further to go to get to the front door than an able bodied person. Does that make sense?
Usually, parking is in a good location, but there is not enough of it. In one of the shopping malls in the area there is a Macaroni Grill, Rubios, and a Cold Stone Ice cream all right in a row. How many handicap parking spaces are there? Two!
My two youngest sons have little league baseball games twice a week. That is a ton of kids playing ball each week at the four ball fields. How many handicap spots do they have for the hundreds of people there each day? None!
Things are a lot better than it was twenty years ago, but this country still has a long way to go to provide services for the disabled. Most people don't think about it that much. I know I didn't, but like me, I hope you don't have to become disabled too to notice it.
