Originally Posted by camick

My husband has been in pain since the second day after shoulder surgery in March 2010. The shoulder surgery was mainly to remove bone spurs that the doctor thought was causing his shoulder pain at the time. After surgery he didn't have the pain that he had before surgery...so the surgery seemed to work for that pain. But once the nerve block started wearing off, he had a different more intense pain.

He told the surgeon about this new pain, but the surgeon bluffed it off, gave him a shot, and said come back in a month to see if its any better. A month later, the surgeon did the same thing.

During these two months he was going to physical therapy, and the pain was increasing. He can no longer raise his arm above his head. The PT finally did a test that showed his pulse went away when he tried to raise his arm above his head, and he said that he might have TOS.

When my husband tried to contact the surgeon to talk about TOS, the surgeon was on a 6 week vacation.

During this time period, my husband tried to go to other doctors, but nobody would touch him.

Finally the surgeon came back from vacation, and sent him to a thoracic surgeon in town because he didn't think it was TOS.

The thoracic surgeon didn't want to touch him either, so he sent him to a doc in Dallas...3 hours away.

In the meantime, the surgeon sets him up with another doc in Dallas who is supposedly a guru shoulder surgeon to see if he had something else going wrong with his shoulder. But the secretary who was supposed to set up the appointment sent his information to the wrong doctor. It was a month later before the appt was finally made.

A few weeks ago, he went to the thoracic surgeon in Dallas and was diagnosed with TOS. The doc told him he had it and the only fix was surgery. So he set up surgery for the soonest available time which is after Thanksgiving.

Well, this week he finally had the other appt with the shoulder surgeon in Dallas. Now this doc is saying he "thinks" my husband might have RSD, and that he must not have the TOS surgery.

Yesterday, the TOS surgeon canceled the surgery, and said it was because he has been doing this for years and knows what he is doing. My husband was in a deep depression last night when I came home from work. All he could think about was he has been in pain for almost 9 months and he is about to get shuffled around again because nobody wants to touch him.

Now today, the TOS surgeon calls him back and says the surgery is back on if my husband wants to do it. The doc met with the shoulder surgeon and looked at the tests that were done this week. He says my husband has extremely severe TOS and really needs the surgery. But he didn't want to do the surgery because if he does have RSD the surgery will make it worse. But if he does not have RSD, the surgery should make it better.

We are soooo confused. It's a 50/50 chance that his pain will not get worse. Has anyone else gone thru this toss up decision? What decision did you make? And what was the outcome?

Thanks!