I am honored and thankful to all of my followers and this week, I saw we had quite a lot of new followers. Welcome to you, from whatever avenue you found me, I would like to say that I am quite aware of the blog being more personalized at the moment. I am very close to starting the podcast and once that starts, I will be offering a more in-depth view of the chronic pain I have experienced, studied, and educated myself and want to express.
I started all this because I feel if I share what I go through and have been through I will be helping someone somewhere, be it a modality, a procedure, or even how I speak to the doctor and gain the maximum amount of information. Let’s share our pain stories and throw it out to the listenership and see their reaction and how their experiences went, and also get professionals who will listen and want to help.
From last week I have been through quite a busy fortnight, so where did I leave you? argh yes …… I am still doing extremely well; I have the completion of the RFA coming this Friday which will be the ablation of nerves on the other side. Hey, it’s a three-day recovery and I’m used to it now, bring it on!
I had a follower ask what’s my base. Ok, let me quickly explain, the base, also known as the baseline or the chronic level, is the level of pain a chronic pain sufferer is always in and is the lowest pain point that you can get your level of pain down to. This pain has been with some patients for years and sometimes a lifetime. Fibromyalgia patients deal with this more noticeably. Since 2012 my base is a 3 to 4. But, please give me one more second to give a word of advice to young chronic pain suffers. Do not give your physician, nurse or caregiver a pain level above and beyond the baseline number, if your base is 4 but you give your doctor a pain level 3 when it should be 7 you’ll be chasing the pain and not controlling it. Always tell the medical professional your pain level as no pain is equal to zero and so on. I will go more into this in the podcast.
Finally, I spoke to an Interventional Radiologist, (IR doctor) I had no idea what these doctors did or that they even existed. I would have never known about their sheer existence if I had not got a spine surgery second opinion. Remember, my spine surgeon, the second one, wanted me to have an appointment with someone he works closely with to help him know what he’s even dealing with before he opens me up. The IR doctor said, listen if your Radiofrequency Ablations are working, I can go in even more closely to the nerve root and fray it. We have had a very high success rate with patients in your condition and if it works you would only need to come back every few years and repeat the procedure saving you a very large surgery. Yes, I will do that! so next time, this last procedure stops working I will sign up with him.
Also, I had to go to the dentist this week and have my teeth looked at, the periodontist instructs me I need gum surgery????? Are you getting the title of this week’s blog? I am feeling great but still need all this crap done. It gets tedious, and I don’t know if I am sinking or swimming right now
Photo Credit: Brandon Patricio