I have had back pain for as long as I can remember. It has slowly gotten worse over the years and has become incapacitating in the last year. The severity has become such that I can not even eat a meal without ending up laying on the floor a few times to relieve the pain. The reason I lay on the floor is because I have what my doctor calls a mechanical issue. My spine is not attached to my tailbone. I moves forward over 5/8". When doing this it crushes the nerve roots that exit the spine at that elevation. Laying down lets the spine move enough to let the pressure off the nerve roots thus taking the pain with it.
Of course you would think that painkillers would just take it away but that is not the case. We headed down the road of narcotics and we quickly found as the dosage of percocet increased that it was doing nothing. Most of the pain I experience is 'neuropathic' pain, and this pain seems to be immune to narcotics. Once we were moving into the realm of morphine my doctor suggested that we try something he called a 'pain clinic trick'. He got me started on something called 'gabapentin', which is an anti-seizure drug for epileptics. It's supposed to stop / slow nerve transfer, affecting the way the brain receives pain. At first it didn't seem like it would do anything for me but I agreed to keep at it as we adjusted timing and increased dosages. In the end I'm at 3200mg a day which makes my doctor very nervous as he says that it is outside the recommended daily high dose. I believe he mumbled something about it being an 'experimental dose for short term use only'. Whenever I tell other doctors how much gabapentin I am taking there eyes get big like saucers.
Once we were on track and the gabapentin was being reasonably effective at managing my neuropathic pain I still had the mechanical pain to deal with. From what the doctors tell me my spine is sitting directly on my tailbone without the added cushioning of a disc. Once I wasn't feeling the nerve pain so much I started feeling the mechanical pain. Now we needed to head down the narcotic path again. And once again the narcotics were not working. In the end I am taking dilaudid which is an incredibly potent drug. Some reading on wikipedia tells me that it is thought to be 3-4 times stronger than morphine. I guess that's why my doctor almost crapped his pants when I asked to double the dose from 4mg to 8mg. And was that ever a mistake, 8mg rendered me a total zombie. I couldn't even lift my head. We have now come to the conclusion that for me 6mg is the high dose.
So it would seem that we have reasonably effectively managed my pain to get me through to surgery. And surgery can not come soon enough for me. Gone will be the days of calling for help from the side of the highway because I can't drive any longer, or having to get someone to drive me home and another to follow with my car because it's just physically impossible for me to drive. Laying on the kitchen floor while the rest of the family are enjoying their meal and the kids asking if I'm 'all right' will be a thing of the past. This will definitely be a life altering event. The best of all of it will be that I will actually be able to work a full week!
Of course the recovery will be long an boring. I hear conflicting stories of the duration of recovery, but I know it's going to take some time and it's going to hurt. I'm told that I won't be driving for 2 months which is a real bummer. They also tell me things like I won't even be able to load the dishwasher or put in a load of laundry! Basically it sounds like watching TV is as much as I will be allowed to do. Of course my surgeon says that everyone is different and that my body will let me know what is okay. But I am living with the 'recovery nazi' and she's not going to let me do much :( Of course I say that tongue in cheek, I'm very happy to have Christie, especially for my recovery. If anyone knows back pain it's her. She will be a huge asset to my recovery. But make no mistake, she'll be a Nazi about it.
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