[dougp]

I appreciate finding this site. As you can see by the title of this 1st post, I have a constant struggle with negativity.

I am a 59 year old mail and have been on SSDI for a bit over 6 months. I have an officially failed 3-level cervical fusion, as the very competent and seemingly without any compassion neurosurgeon told my wife and I about two years ago. I had the original fusion from an injury I received while moving furniture. I was having a lot of shoulder, arm, and hand pain and within a couple of weeks post fusion, the pain was the same or worse and my stamina and physical abilities were severly curtailed. I went to a pain management physician who ended up having me on 150 mcg. of fentanyl every 48 hours, as well as 90 mg. of methadone for breakthru pain. In December of 2005 I had a spinal cord stimulator implanted by a neurosurgeon who does the surgery with the pain mgt doc generally present to assist with the placement of leads, etc. The scs was a seeming miracle, and within a week or two (after post surgery discomfort went away) I was free of 90 percent of my pain, started dropping pain med levels as rapidly as permitted, stopped my applic process for SSDI, dropped a credit card insurance policy we had paid on unwittingly for 5 years which would have paid off our $7,000 in credit card debt if I became disabled, and was exultant-as was my dear wife of 34 years. 29 days later, like someone flipped a switch, the stimulator stopped working. This had never been mentioned to me as a possibility, but I found out later that it is more like a probability. I am now on my 4th scs and it is in the process of failing. Back on very high dosages of opiates, have serious nerve damage in my feet, and 6 weeks ago had a TIA (am from a genetically blessed family and virtually no stroke or heart stuff along with mid-90's life spans. At time of TIA the ER docs did a cat scan, later on a doppler was done on my carotids which showed nothing remarkable, but because the quality of the doppler was a bit low, they did a CTA on me and found one carotid 100 percent blocked, the other between 70-80 percent blocked, and not from artherosclerosis, but as the result of early childhood trauma (?). I am now seeing docs in Chicago at Northwestern Medical School, and am getting assessments of the carotids won't mean anything to my lifespan, which I find very difficult to buy, to I am at risk an moment for a massive if not fatal stroke. On the 25th, I am having an angiogram under general anesthetic, and then I am told decisions will be made on suggested care-repair.

At any rate, I have met so many brilliant people with such narrow, focused perspectives that it blows my mind--there's an expression which shows my age, and I want to live for a bunch of reasons, but I also do not want to live in constant pain and as a life-draining anchor for my wife and to a lesser extent for my children. I have been in AA for 17 years this August, and as any of you folks who are "friends of Bill" are well aware, a drunk cannot afford resentments or long flights of anger. I pray, and many others pray for me, and have not had any relapse so far, but I sure would like a joint and a beer right now!

Enough for now--time for bed and the two to three hours it normally takes to get to sleep. I hope this has been somewhat coherent. I used to be a pretty decent writer, but that is now not the case, and I have gone from being a book a week reader to not having finished a magazine article in two years. poor me, poor me--

God's grace to all of you-thanks for listening.