Let the journey begin! My SCS trial/implant with ANS St. Jude

Treca · 01-24-2011, 09:46 PM

Hello everyone!

I thought that I would start my own little thread because I know how beneficial it is to have this type of thread and I know that Rrae, Mark56, Fionab, and,trchr12 have been very helpful to me.

What I noticed was that there wasn't to many "journey" threads on just SCS for Cervical and well I thought that I would go ahead and share mine.

My story I think starts a little different from a lot of people and I could be wrong about this but from what I've seen so far I'm a rare bird...

Please know that this post will be long because I want you to know my back story and what has finally brought me here to this site and why I am now doing the SCS trial.

This is my journey...

It was 1998 and the middle of December. My husband and I had only been married for 4 months and I would notice that as we would ride in our little sports car and I would sit in the passenger seat with my left foot under my right knee that I would start to have pain shoot up from my left outer hip to my knee. After about 5 weeks of this happening and having a flare up one night while sitting on the couch I knew something just wasn't right and scheduled to see my doctor. He couldn't figure out what in the world was wrong with me and so had me do X-rays, MRI's, Tons of Physical Therapies(regular, message, aquatics,...etc...).

Well after doing all those Physical therapies my pain spread like wild fire up my back to my neck, shoulders, and middle back where it has stayed for the last 10 years. The weird thing about my situation though is that I no longer have pain in my left hip where the pain originally started. He finally diagnosed me with Fibromyalgia and first put me on Vicodin. When the Vicodin no longer worked I then went through the following meds...Hydrocodone, Ultram, Cymbalta, Oxycontin, Fentanyl patches, and a few others that I can't even remember now... then at last methadone(Please know that I was NOT on any of these meds when I was pregnant with my son and that I was put on methadone in 2003) In May of 2001 we found out that I was expecting our first child and my husband decided to go back into the Army so that we would have medical insurance because my condition was expensive and now with a baby on the way we would need it badly.

So the hubs went to the Army and of course they shipped him overseas(it was the beginning of the war) he came back in 2004 and we moved to GA. Well the doctors in GA didn't like that I was on Methadone and decided to take me off that and put me back on Ultram and then add Baclofen, and Neurontin at a extremely high dose. This combination worked for a long time for me and then my hubs got orders for Dallas Texas and off we went. I found a wonderful pain management doctor there and he took me off the Neurontin but kept me on the Ultram and Baclofen but added Ultram ER for me to take at night because my pain keeps me up at night. He found that I actually had Kissing Spine and Chronic Pain Syndrome after doing the following things.... We did 2 Rhizotomes, Nerve blocks, epidural injections, and, lidocaine injections. He of course did more X-rays and MRI's. All of these worked for a little while but never helped in the long run. After seeing this doctor for 3 years he and I both agreed that I did not have Fibromyalgia. I no longer had the signs of having Fibromyalgia and my pain did not travel and stayed constant.

Well the hubs got transferred back to GA and I actually got VERY lucky with a on base doctor that wasn't a idiot. He trusted me right away(it was sad because he told me after meeting him only 3 times that I was his ONLY patient that didn't look like a pain patient and that I didn't come in begging for my pain meds) and he knew I was telling the truth about my situation. By this time the Ultram and Baclofen were no longer working and I wanted to try something else and he then asked what had worked in the past and I told him that the methadone did and he was OK with me getting back on that and so we decided to see if the methadone would work for me the way it did years ago. After months of being on the methadone I finally had to face the fact that it wasn't working and I was already on a high dose and I was just tired of taking all these meds. He then referred me to the pain management doctor I have now. She is a wonderful lady and she really listens to me and never makes me feel rushed. After talking it over with her and doing research of my own we both decided that I would be a good candidate for SCS trial and here we are today...

I will be going into my doctor tomorrow to start my trial and I am nervous and excited. I'm also worried that it just won't work for me. I'm trying to be optimistic and pessimistic at the same time...lol...

I want to take this time to thank everyone for being so nice and helpful. This site has been a Godsend for me and I don't know what I would do without it during this time in my life. As I go through my trial and potential permanent implant I will continue to keep you posted on how my journey is going. I hope that I can help a few people with my telling of my story just like Mark, Rrae and Fionab have been for me. I am open to any questions that any of you may have for me because I know that all of us are "newbies" at one point and it really helps to have people answer our questions when we have them.

LET THE SCS TRIAL BEGIN!!!!

Big

's
Treca

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