Originally Posted by Elysium1973

Hello all. New to these forums.
I had an L5-S1 microdiscectomy in may 2011 and at first had total numbness in the left foot. Since, the feeling has returned in the form of constant burning pain and allodynia. When I was with my first PM, he did 2 epidural steroid injections that were supposed to help break down the scar tissue at the S1 nerve root. He performed two and then decided it was time for an SCS trial. At that time I was only on Percocet 10/325 and cymbalta 60mg.
I went to see my neurosurgeon for a second opinion and he said it was way too early to think about doing that and referred me to another PM doc for more medication management. Incidentally, this new PM was the old PM's partner! We live in a small community so everyone kind of knows everybody else.
Anyway, I'm now on Perc 10/325, Lyrica 600mg, and Cymbalta 60mg. He did a sympathetic nerve block that was successful for two days and now the pain is back even worse. Not sure if I'm dealing with CRPS or sympathetically mediated neuropathic pain. Regardless, my question is:

1) do you think it's worthwhile to do the SCS trial?
2) do you think it's worthwhile to do a pain pump trial?

Incidentally, the whole idea behind the SCS is to get "a young person like me" off all narcotics. I'm 39. They also said they wouldn't give me any pain meds for breakthrough pain after getting the SCS put in. If I get the pain pump put in, they told me they would put in lidocaine and clonidine, but nothing else (this is the first PM). The second PM told me he wouldn't put a pain pump inside me, period. He would only consider an SCS if I totally failed everything else.

Very confused.