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

[allanh.livejournal.com]

At the risk of raising false hopes, I will point out that the Stanford Clinics, while excellent, are not the only superb medical resource in the Bay Area. Hence my consulting a liver specialist at UCSF for Hep C and a gastroenterologist at El Camino Medical Group (Palo Alto Medical Foundation) for my acid reflux, both of whom have given me more to work with in the past week than I've received from their corresponding Stanford clinics over the past year.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I know I want, if not a completely separate doc to do his own "second opinion" diagnosis, at the very least a huge number of questions answered.