Is It Supposed To Require Torture To End Pain?

First business, the house sold, we got paid. Now to get into the new place.

Steve had an appointment with a pain specialist earlier this week. One would think that would be defined as somebody who knows how to relieve pain. It didn't quite turn out that way.

First he had a nice, hour long, appointment with a doctor to determine what, after all he's been through, might be the next appropriate thing to do to help, or try to help, relieve his back and knee pain. Knee replacements never helped knee pain. Back treatments uniformly helped either not at all from the beginning, or gave initial relief and then backed off from providing any relief.

Her referral was to a clinic down in the metro which did nerve ablation, under the theory that nerves radiating out from  between vertebrae spread pain outward into other parts of the body, and pinpointing exactly which ones are the first step to ending the pain. Then they get zapped or something, and pain gone.

Doncha love theories?

Steve has a very sensitive back. I have learned over the years to never, ever come up behind him and lovingly touch his back. For him it is nothing in any way, shape or form, loving. If I tell him first, he's ready and very receptive, starting at the neck and working down, especially for a massage or scratching an itch he can't reach. Otherwise, he jumps at a touch, and that jarring itself brings on more pain.

So of course he informed the people preparing to  do the procedure about how his back reacts. And of course, as soon as he was laying on the table they squirted cold gel in exactly the wrong spot, making him jump! And say a few choice words! Not a propitious start, to say the least.

Then came the needles. They are supposed to pave their own path with some anesthetic as they locate and travel either up or along a chosen nerve. If having root canal treatments is any sample of the procedure, the numbing has to come about 5 minutes before the rest of whatever they plan to do, or the result is pure torture. If you have no clue, count yourself blessed and just take my word for it. If you do know... I'm sorry.

Steve tried really hard to comply with their plan. There was no apparent anesthetic with the first needle. Nor the second. By the time they started number three, he insisted they stop, remove them all, and he walked out once he'd recovered enough to move.

Predictably he was in more pain coming out than going in, and for the next couple days it was worse than he'd been in for a while, bad as that has been. For two days he insisted "never again", and finally changed that to "only if they put me completely under first." That still sounds like only a "maybe" even if they promise a general.

Of course by the time he got to that point, we were crawling  down the throat of a big holiday weekend. Everybody for whatever he needed was short staffed, all communications mean either fighting with websites he hadn't gotten back with his new hard drive, or being on hold with circular voicemail systems that send one everywhere except to a live person. He finally gave up after long unproductive holds with several of them.

We'll start the process again after the holiday weekend is over, maybe Tuesday with some ambition and a little prodding. Just like we're waiting to see with hopes of hearing Tuesday if we passed our background checks to get into the place we want. Meanwhile, for some perspective, We've been up here 2 1/2 months and Steve has yet to go fishing, despite offers from both friends and family to take him to a good fishing hole.

'Nuff said?