[RobotDarger]

I will compress my story to the best of my ability. Please bear with me! I have a congenital defect (spondylolesthesis I think it's called) and in my mid 20's it began to affect my life. For a long time the pain was off and on but it began to show up more frequently and when it did crop up it was usually worse than the time before. Still manageable though. In no way did it affect my quality of life and I had zero restrictions.
In Jan of 2007 I stopped working. I was working construction at the time and was taking 5mg of oxycodone three times a day on days I worked. When I stopped working I thought that I was merely taking a week or two off to rest my back and let the pain die down before going back to work. The pain only got worse. My PCP finally sent me to see a pain management doctor and he put me on a steady diet of narcotics. He did an MRI and the result was that my L5 had shifted. On the model he showed me the position of everything and it didn't look good! I thought that everything was just a result of the congenital defect so I didn't ask any questions. It turns out that I had fractured my L5 in two places which allowed it to slide forward causing the pain in the power back as well as nerve pain and numbness on the lower left side of my body.
He told me that they were going to do radio frequency ablation to burn some nerves off and give me epidurals and this should help with the pain. Which it did....to a point. Two years of these procedures I went through. By the end I had about a 20few minute window where I could be verticle before I'd want to scream. I ended up on fentanyl, ms contin, soma, oxycodone and valium and the doses just kept getting higher and higher. Quality of life would improve for a month at the most before my tolerance went up and I was right back to laying on the couch for a living. They tried to put me on methadone and I refused because of what I had heard about it. I had no life, I merely existed. And existence hurt.
The doctor was always telling me to just hang in there....things will get better after the next RFA. I can't begin to describe the mental part of all of this...suffice it to say that between the loss of my life as I knew it, being completely doped up on a 24 hr basis and having zero hope that anything was going to change I was in a pretty bad place in my head. I got to the point where I finally demanded to be sent to see a surgeon. I didn't care if I died on the table, was paralyzed.....SOMETHING had to change though.
The surgeon took x-rays and told me I had broken my vertebrae in two places which caused it to slide which caused all of the symptoms. I wanted to kill the pain management doctor. I walked out if the surgeon's office with a surgery date for a month from then. He did a laminectomy on the L5 and fused it to the S1. As soon as I woke up I could tell the difference. It was a miracle. An absolute miracle. There was finally hope. The recovery wasn't bad and things just kept getting better. I even went to a baseball game. Other people wondered how I could be so happy because compared to others I was still in pretty bad shape. However, instead of having 20 minutes I now had 4-5 HOURS!!!!!
There's much more to the story and that's not the end but this is a very long post. Maybe I'll write the rest of it along with what I'm going through right now in another post. What I learned was this.....I need to be proactive. I need to be responsible for my health and I can't trust a doctor to know everything and/or do what's in my best interest. I absolutely beloved that the pain management doctor knew what was wrong with me and didn't send me to see a surgeon because he wanted the I insurance money. I have government funded insurance that covers EVERYTHING and I've never had an approval for a procedure get denied.
I also believe that narcotics and other pain medications should be used to bridge the gap between when you see the doctor and when the problem is actually fixed. Not in all cases, obviously...but what happened with me? I started on 5mga of oxycodone and ended up with fentanyl, oxycodone, morphine, muscle relaxers and benzos...and I would STILL occasionally go to the ER to get iv dilauded. If narcotics are the ONLY answer what happens? Over a period of time your tolerance goes up, the dosage goes up, you get more and more and more....eventually you get to the points where in order to get any kind of relief you would need to take so much it would kill you.
I hate to be such a downer....my story really does end well! Today life is absolutely amazing and I'm starting a new job tomorrow. My first day of work since Jan of 2007!!!!! I'm so glad I found this place. Hopefully me sharing this will help someone out...