VERY bad day for CJ

[cjsmith]

I went to the Stanford Pain Clinic this afternoon. The guy diagnosed me with something something neuritis (I'll get a copy of the full report when the typists are done with it), which he says is under the umbrella of CRPS (although not by any means a bad case).

He says there are several things we can try:
- Medication, which is not likely to work
- Some kind of funky spinal stimulation thing, which is not likely to work
- A sympathetic nerve block, which might or might not give partial relief for three hours or three weeks
- Injecting Botox (into the nerve?), which is not likely to work and which "there is no way your insurance will pay for"
- Surgical or mechanical interventions, which not only likely won't work but could make things REALLY WAY WAY WAY WORSE

So I might get partial relief from an expensive and uncomfortable procedure that would, if it lasts long enough to be worth it, have to be repeated over and over forever.

This is it. End of the line. No more hope for miracle cures, or even nonmiracle cures, or ever having a normal life again.

Comments

[wooddragon.livejournal.com]

Fuck.


(It's possible a pain guy is not the final, final, final word... I once had an enlarged thyroid, and a surgeon wanted to remove it. It was just an infection that went away... Sort of the 'if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.' I don't say that to give you false hope, but he's at the Stanford Pain Clinic. Is it possible he's looking at symptoms and not causes?)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Possible. CRPS kind of is "symptoms and not causes" because we know so little about it as yet. (Wish I could remember the name of the neuritis; CRPS is a big umbrella and much of it, he said, wouldn't apply to my case. I need something to type into Google!)

Bleah.