Pain, Pain, Go Away
When I went in for my one year post-op, my neurosurgeon finally got fed up enough with my whining to refer me to the UW Pain Clinic. My appointment was today and I'm glad I didn't listen to the little voice that told me the appointment would be useless so I should just cancel. The appointment was the opposite of useless and I am finally feeling some kind of hope about actual pain management in my future. The doctor was extremely frank, saying that while her clinic would never be able to completely resolve my pain symptoms due to my condition, the focus will be on getting me back to writing, since that is my main concern what with the nerve pain in my thumb and all.
She was extremely concerned about my posture and the overall tightness of my muscles. I am supposed to go back in about three weeks for some trigger point injections, and will be getting more referrals to other types of treatment. In the meantime, she said to really work on getting my shoulders back and down since I guess I am trying to touch them to my nose or something. Just pressing my shoulders back into my chair here and trying to get my shoulder blades together has already proven helpful with the typing. I can feel the nerve pain in my thumb, but it's not nearly as bad as usual. I'm not having to ignore or disassociate in order to get my thoughts down. So, that's huge.
In the beginning of my appointment she said that she was reading all the notes from my other doctors and said that I'm "famous" in my chart. What a weird thing to say, right? At first I assumed it was just filled with a thousand different ways for doctors to call me a hypochondriac, but maybe it's just because I have this super weird condition.
Also, she said I got "all the points" indicating PTSD on their pain tracker app. It totally caught me off guard because while yes to the PTSD stuff, I wasn't expecting it to be brought up quite so...easily? Offhandedly? I dunno. Anyway, she was interested in those results as well since trauma will definitely affect the way we treat my pain.
In any case, I'm super hopeful. Like, super hopeful. I liked the clinic a lot, it's easy for me to get to even on the bus, and they are part of UW, which means they're connected to all my other doctors. There is also a chronic pain support group run by the clinic social worker, and I'm thinking about checking it out at least once.
We'll see what happens.
She was extremely concerned about my posture and the overall tightness of my muscles. I am supposed to go back in about three weeks for some trigger point injections, and will be getting more referrals to other types of treatment. In the meantime, she said to really work on getting my shoulders back and down since I guess I am trying to touch them to my nose or something. Just pressing my shoulders back into my chair here and trying to get my shoulder blades together has already proven helpful with the typing. I can feel the nerve pain in my thumb, but it's not nearly as bad as usual. I'm not having to ignore or disassociate in order to get my thoughts down. So, that's huge.
In the beginning of my appointment she said that she was reading all the notes from my other doctors and said that I'm "famous" in my chart. What a weird thing to say, right? At first I assumed it was just filled with a thousand different ways for doctors to call me a hypochondriac, but maybe it's just because I have this super weird condition.
Also, she said I got "all the points" indicating PTSD on their pain tracker app. It totally caught me off guard because while yes to the PTSD stuff, I wasn't expecting it to be brought up quite so...easily? Offhandedly? I dunno. Anyway, she was interested in those results as well since trauma will definitely affect the way we treat my pain.
In any case, I'm super hopeful. Like, super hopeful. I liked the clinic a lot, it's easy for me to get to even on the bus, and they are part of UW, which means they're connected to all my other doctors. There is also a chronic pain support group run by the clinic social worker, and I'm thinking about checking it out at least once.
We'll see what happens.