Log #15 (Handicap Parking)

Just a few things to mention today regarding my visit to the Pain Management Doctor...

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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 of 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.

Log #12 (Fibromyalgia)

Truth be told, I'm very tired so I won't write too much tonight.

I made it in to see my Primary Care Doctor today so we could go over the problems I had with the higher dosage of Requip and the problems it caused. Plus we had to talk about the fatigue I feel, which has been getting worse of late.

I told him everything that has been bothering me lately such as a general flu-like ache all over, fatigue in my arms and legs, feeling that my head will explode, and agitation with anxiety. All of this is added to the pain I feel in my back, legs, and groin. So I feel very out of sorts.

My wife went into the visit with me so she could bring up things that I forget. The main thing that came up is the possibility of having Fibromyalgia so he pressed a few different pressure points, which were quite painful. That is a good indication that I may, in fact, have that problem. The doctor told us that FM is hard to diagnose and that it's like the flavor of the month in the medical community. It has become the easy diagnosis for a lot of patients with muscle and nerve pains.

One of the main things I like about my doctor is that he takes the time to explain everything in detail. He listens to everything I have to say and when he gives me a prescription he explains the different medications available, what things they're supposed to do, and how they work in the body to relieve the various symptoms. He asks a lot of questions about medications I may have had in the past and how my body reacted to them. He gives me options on which medications I may want to try while offering his opinion on which one he thinks I should choose. Plus he makes it clear that with medications it can be a long and tedious task to determine what will work best for me.

No doctor is perfect or infallible, but when you have a doctor who demonstrates genuine concern for your welfare, it's easy to put some trust there. I've had far too many doctors who walk in the room, ask a few questions, write a prescription, and then leave without explaining anything except how and when to take the pills. Many of them are over booked on purpose so they're guaranteed enough patients to maximize their billing to the insurance companies. The doctor's focus is shifted to the number of patients he can see instead of the number he can help (no gender implied by this statement). It is quantity over quality in it's purest form.

Anyway, FM seems to be some of my problem and he gave me a prescription for something (the name escapes me now, but I'll make a note of it in tomorrow's log). The prescription he gave today may be changed depending on what the Pain Management Doctor says on Thursday.

Like I said, I'm tired so I'm off to bed. I hope the new blog layout looks a lot better to everyone who reads this blog. I created the new header using Photoshop Elements 7. My next step is to go through the posts and add pictures and illustrations to make my points clearer.

Here are the symptoms of Fibromyalgia:

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.