A Journey Through Chronic Pain

I have been an absent parent to my blog for some time now. Life takes many twists and turns and sometimes all one can do is hold on for dear life.

Pain has once again become my constant companion (not that it ever really left)  but with a knee replacement that was 11 years into wearing out something had to be done. I had been scheduled to have a revision on 9/11/08 but that was derailed by a raging case of poison ivy/sumac on my legs. So on 9/23 the surgery went forward and I am now recovering nicely.

The only problem is that in the midst of all of this my back has reared it’s ugliness and I finally got up the courage to see my doc who’s specialty is backs. He sent me for an epidural the week before my knee surgery but he feels pretty strongly that back sugery may well be in the offing. Severe stenosis as well as a handful of herniated disks had made it a surgeon’s playground. Only problem is that I am not convinced that long term it will make much difference. The sciatica is so bad that some days I don’t know if I can cope but I keep pushing on as I have done for many years.

The one thing  we did revisit is a trial of a spinal nerve stimulator to try and lessen the pain. I would very much like to hear from anyone out there who has had any experience, good or bad with one of these. I have some experience of my own but it was more than 20 years ago and the technology has changed significantly since then.