joyful2beeblogs

I tell my story in the hopes it may help another person who is dealing with back pain and getting no relief. There are good doctors, mediocre doctors, money grabbing doctors, and there are some absolutely wonderful, compassionate doctors, who know their trade well, and help their patients. Be wary. Look up patient opinions on their sites. Ask for copies of any reports or CD’s with pictures from x-rays or MRIs, that the doctor gives you. Or ask the doctor if you can have a CD or take a photo with your phone of an x-ray or two.

Just to put everything out there, I have scoliosis, osteophytes, (bone spurs, where vertebrae rub on each other, thinned discs, mostly in the lower back or lumbar area.) This was after 37 years of nursing, being overweight and on my feet 8-12 hours a shift. As you can see, my back was a mess. Just for starting information I had had multiple episodes of sciatica in the past. The pain always was in my buttock and down the back of my leg. I did the physical therapy exercises with each flare up. And was okay for a year or sometimes more.

For this last year I lived with a steady low to moderate pain in my left hip and sciatica type pain in my left buttock and leg. I had the cortisone injections to the appropriate lumbar vertebrae that might be the cause of sciatic pain; but there was no relief. I was walking with a rollator (a kind of walker but with four free rolling wheels, hand brakes, a seat, and storage under the seat). I had to bring it with me on every trip shopping and even quick “in and out” shopping. Every time, I had to: fold the rollator up; put it in the back of my car, and use a cane to walk to my car’s front door to drive. Then do everything in reverse when I got home or other locations.

To get groceries, I said a prayer that there would be a scooter or some kind of grocery cart near the “Handicap” parking areas. Thankfully 9 out of 10 times there was either a scooter or a grocery cart I could push up to the store to find a scooter to use.

The pain in my left hip prevented me from sleeping on my left side. So I turned to the right hip or back when I tried to sleep. But there was another pain. The sciatica type pain affected my upper, outer and inner thigh, knee, shin, and ankle. I thought that was rather strange and had never heard of someone with pain in my same locations. As a nurse, I always had back patients with sciatica down the back of the leg. Almost every night, I had to get up at least once to apply the only cream that helped when my shin or knee started hurting. Imagine my surprise when the doctor trained in Interventional Spine Therapy showed me a slide from the computer on how the sciatic nerve travels down the leg and branches at the very places I had been treating for pain. I had been on Naproxen for years and rarely needed Baclofen for muscle spasms.

The Spine Doctors ordered, high doses of Gabapentin three times a day from the beginning. It just took the edge off of the pain. The Gabapentin often made my memory foggy and I often would lose track of what I was saying. I am 72 years old, but I don’t believe that caused this.

In late October my best friend, also a nurse, but one who had had two different back surgeries for back pain and problems. She encouraged me to go to her neurosurgeon. She wanted to go with me as a spokesperson and as my memory. Her doctor checked my back then asked me to lie on the exam table and raise my right leg. I raised it at a right angle with no pain. When he asked me to raise my left leg, I couldn’t raise it over two or three inches because of the severe pain. The doctor informed me then and there, “You may have back problems but your biggest problem is your hip.”

My mouth fell open. WOW!

I had a hip x-ray in February that didn’t show anything drastic. After MRIs of the spine and finally an MRI of the hip in November, the Spine Specialist showed me the problem.

The head of the femur fits into the socket provided by the pelvis. I had an x-ray of my hip from February and the hip joint was fine. The MRI of the hip that was last taken revealed an eroded head of my left femur. The top of the femur should look like a ball. Notice the top of the hip joint and you will see the head is eroded.

The Orthopedic Surgery Specialist saw the erosion of the head of the femur and told me, usually he could wait a month to do surgeries for this. But in my case, he felt he needed to get it done sooner. About two weeks later I was in surgery for a hip replacement (hip arthroplasty).

Sure enough, I had my new hip joint in two weeks. Before the surgery, others who had had this done said they didn’t have any pain after surgery! They were right! I didn’t need Oxycodone. I hadn’t used it at home and not sure if it was given in the hospital as a routine post-operative medicine. But I honestly was not hurting!

I stayed home after the surgery, waiting to start physical therapy near the hospital. In the meantime, a Home Health Physical Therapist gave me exercises to strengthen my hip and leg muscles.

My relief of pain has made me feel like a new woman. I am thankful for good doctors and the staff at the hospital. They were all wonderful.