Friday, June 01, 2012
10 years & Counting
  • 10 years & Counting
  • Location: FL, United States
  • Gender: Female
  • Birthday:
  • Bio: 200lb computer tower fell on me in 2002
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HEALTH INTERESTS:

spine injury,  sacroiliitis,  Back Pain

DRUGS I AM TAKING:

Hydrocodine,  Cyclobenzaprine,  Tramadol,  Fentanyl

ABOUT ME:

In July of 2001 I was working in Marketing with a tower computer. Take your average home computer and put it on viagra, 3 disc read/write, 3 air conditioners, 36+ software applications, etc. For six month I asked on a daily basis for a longer mouse cord, the one I had connected to the back of the system, fed up through a whole in the table and accesses a USB port. The 4 ft. cord would wrap around the hands of my chair on a regular basis. I would stand up and the tower would fall. I ended up spending my nights, weekends and holidays recreating work that was damaged in the fall. It started to fall and all I could think of was the end of our weekend plans. I was pulled down with the chair, put out my arm to stop the tower from landing too hard and crashed my head into the wall behind me. The next day I woke up and there was literally no feeling on the left side of my body. I went to work and just by coincidence I had an appointment with my GP. I told him of my symptoms and his first thought was heart attack due to the high level stress of the job. EKG came out fine. I did ask him if I should apply heat to the left side of my body, should I take aspirin, would it just go away on it's own. He decided to test my reflexes on the left side and there weren't any. He said he was pretty sure that I had herniated a disc in the fall. I asked around for an orthopedic surgery when the cortisone shots into the spine didn't provide much relief. I ended up with with the most horrible Dr imagineable. I wanted donor bone but he insisted that he wanted a graph from my hip. I woke up in so much pain I was begging God to take me! Tylenol with codine is all he gave me. I mentioned immediately that I was having cramps and numbness in my left leg. I was left with no feeling, had to learn how to walk on a leg that I couldn't feel. I started putting all of my weight on the right leg and as the months and specialists ticked by the numbness and pain increased. I finally had to be taken to the ER when I passed out on a lawn mower after hitting a hump. Xrays revealed that by standing on one leg had caused the L4-L5 to squeeze on one side of the spine. My lawyer handling the case should have told me to get health insurance first. It's now considered a pre-existing condition and the surgery to fix the problem was going to cost me out-of-pocket $286,000 plus Dr's, Anesthesiologists, Radiologists cost on top of the $286,000. My insurance has a waiver, they don't cover anything that involves muscular, skeletal or neurological problems. For this I pay $600+/month, $40 co-pay, a $2000.00 deductible and no prescription coverage. I applied for insurance to at least 20 health insurance companies. I flew to India to have the surgery done there, $21,000 complete. This included a FULL SPINE MRI, a 24 position set of Xrays, surgery, hospitalization, medications, and free Physical therapy who came to the house where I was staying rather than me going to her. At 3 months another xray was taken, it showed that the implants were working yet my pain just would not leave me. It's almost been a year and I am becoming more and more bed ridden. We've been wanting to start a family but without pain medications I am so uncomfortable I need help getting out of bed. When my GP saw me at the 8 month period and he told me that if I hadn't any relief to date that I shouldn't expect it to get better. I had him put me on antidepressants. People keep telling me "See a pain management specialist", "you need physical therapy", "yoga", etc. etc. I keep telling them I CAN'T AFFORD TO PAY THE $600 FIRST VISIT FEE FOR THE PAIN MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST! So much for quality health insurance in the US. I can't sleep in a bed anymore, not great for the marriage. I lay in bed with my husband until he's asleep and then I quietly log roll out of bed and come down into the family room and watch TV which doing ice/heat. I am not drug seeking, I can't afford the drugs so if my pain level is below 8 on a scale of 1-10 I take advil which is rather like putting a bandaid on a severed arm. I am constantly exhausted as I sleep in shifts, I am exhausted by 7pm and sleep (despite all my efforts not to) until 8:30pm. By the time I go to "bed" I'm wide awake and am usually up until about 5am and wake around 9. Time spent with my husband is slowly starting to disappear and fall apart. Yesterday I went back to my GP, I bent over and showed him where I have been putting my fists under my hips while lying in a bed. FINALLY SOMEONE CAME UP WITH A DIAGNOSIS! I'm thrilled, just knowing that there's a reason for this unbelieveable pain makes me feel better. He thinks that I am suffering from Sacroiliitis and after researching it on line I think he's right. I am applying for financial assistance from the hospital near my home. After studying the list of possible treatments I realize that I'm looking down the pointy end of a syringe being inserted into my bones. Can't say that I'm all that happy about it but the thought of being pain free for even a week I'd do it. I cannot remember what life without pain was like. Is there anyone out there who has had these shots? How bad is it? How long did it last? How much do they cost? 10 years & Counting

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Living With It in Chronic Pain

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