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Anticipation
Jun. 17th, 2013 06:13 pmI've been dealing with chronic pain in my neck and right shoulder for... most of a year, now. I've had to limit my work, give up most of my hobbies and activities, it's seriously damaged my mental well-being, and I'm taking so many different pain meds that I feel like I should rattle when I walk.
Tomorrow afternoon I have an appointment with an anesthesiologist at a pain management clinic to talk about what can be done to help actually fix this.
I am terrified, and it's taking all of my emotional resources to avoid just cancelling this appointment.
Partly it's because I still don't have an actual diagnosis. When this started, the ER doc mentioned a bone spur compressing my spinal cord and nerve root, but that was just an ER interpretation, and they've been wrong before - for instance, when they misdiagnosed my knee injury as tendonitis. And I'm a little surprised that, when I told my GP I wanted to get to the root of this and find out what could be done, and requested a referral to an orthopedist or neurosurgeon, she sent me straight to an anesthesiologist instead. Which... how the heck is he supposed to know what to do if we don't know what we're treating?
Largely, though, I'm dreading this because so far every medical professional I've worked with on this has been dismissive or critical. The ER doctor made fun of me, and asked me when I had taken up professional boxing. The neurologist I went to for follow-up told me it was just carpal tunnel syndrome (I was also having numbness in my arms) and that the shoulder/neck signs were 'no big deal.' The physical therapist told me that I needed to change my desk height, in spite of my repeated insistence that I didn't have a desk job, and finally told me that I was the problem. I already feel like I'm crazy; like this is either all in my head or all my own fault, and if one more medical professional tells me this isn't that bad, or that I just need to learn to live with it, I don't know how I'll cope.
If he can hand me a diagnosis and a treatment plan, I will fall down on my knees and sing his praises in every language I know. But if he blows me off... I don't know if I'll have the emotional, financial, temporal, and mental resources to keep pushing.
Maybe they're all right. Maybe I am just being a whiny little wimp....
Tomorrow afternoon I have an appointment with an anesthesiologist at a pain management clinic to talk about what can be done to help actually fix this.
I am terrified, and it's taking all of my emotional resources to avoid just cancelling this appointment.
Partly it's because I still don't have an actual diagnosis. When this started, the ER doc mentioned a bone spur compressing my spinal cord and nerve root, but that was just an ER interpretation, and they've been wrong before - for instance, when they misdiagnosed my knee injury as tendonitis. And I'm a little surprised that, when I told my GP I wanted to get to the root of this and find out what could be done, and requested a referral to an orthopedist or neurosurgeon, she sent me straight to an anesthesiologist instead. Which... how the heck is he supposed to know what to do if we don't know what we're treating?
Largely, though, I'm dreading this because so far every medical professional I've worked with on this has been dismissive or critical. The ER doctor made fun of me, and asked me when I had taken up professional boxing. The neurologist I went to for follow-up told me it was just carpal tunnel syndrome (I was also having numbness in my arms) and that the shoulder/neck signs were 'no big deal.' The physical therapist told me that I needed to change my desk height, in spite of my repeated insistence that I didn't have a desk job, and finally told me that I was the problem. I already feel like I'm crazy; like this is either all in my head or all my own fault, and if one more medical professional tells me this isn't that bad, or that I just need to learn to live with it, I don't know how I'll cope.
If he can hand me a diagnosis and a treatment plan, I will fall down on my knees and sing his praises in every language I know. But if he blows me off... I don't know if I'll have the emotional, financial, temporal, and mental resources to keep pushing.
Maybe they're all right. Maybe I am just being a whiny little wimp....
