In November of last year, I was in a car accident, and was diagnosed with whiplash. I’m still in quite a bit of pain.
My doctor sent me to physical therapy, but there hasn’t been any change with my last two evaluations, and so my doctor sent me for an MRI. She says that if no neurological problems are discovered, she’s going to send me to a pain specialist. (Which sounds a bit like a dominatrix to me, but I digress.)
Have any of you ever seen a pain specialist? Did it help? My main concern is that the pain specialist will basically help me cope with my discomfort, but not necessarily help me to recover. My doctor mentioned cortizone shots into the affected muscles-- has anyone ever had this sort of treatment? Did it work? Was it painful?
Any information or experiences would be helpful. Thanks in advance.
There are several different kinds of pain specialists. Some are anesthesiologists who work mainly with pain patients. I think they are the ones who tend to do the injections. I got cortisone for a bulging disc. Unfortunately, it didn’t help me much, but some people get relief from cortisone. Other pain specialists are physiatrists (also known as physical medicine and rehabilitation physicians) who tend to prescribe a combination of medication and therapy, plus sometimes prescribe massage, heat and cold, etc. Another kind is a psychologist. While pain is not my specialty, I have facilitated pain management groups. Although you say you don’t want to just learn to cope with your pain, that might be helpful while you are waiting to recover. We teach patients useful strategies like pacing and adapting how they do things to lessen the pain, as well as how to use relaxation, distraction, and other ways of thinking to cope with their pain.
Hope this is helpful. More than that, I hope you are feeling better soon.
I hope you feel better soon, and don’t have to involve a dominatrix in your recovery (well, unless that’s what you really want…)
I was seeing a therapist about a year and a half ago, who worked part-time. His other part-time job was like what Brynda does - pain management.
He was very enthusiastic about helping people find ways that suited them to deal with the pain as long as it was there. He was of the opinion that some knowledge about how pain ‘works’ can make a long recovery a lot easier to bear.
The more I look at the word ‘works’ in that last sentence, the more I’m convinced that it’s not really appropriate. But I can’t seem to think of a suitable alternative. At any rate, I’m hope you understand what I mean.
I went through all that after my car accident many moons ago. Five months of intense pain in my neck… I was willing to try anything and everything to fix it.
Started with heat therapy… no good.
Manipulation by a PT/chiropractor… stretching neck muscles & rotating my head while I laid there and let him do the work… no change.
Strength training to rebuild the muscles… lifting up to 40lbs with my head on a nautilus machine… got stronger but still hurt like mad.
The pain specialists I went to were just drug dealers and quacks… acupuncture did nothing… the strongest pain killers just made me not mind being in pain… I could still feel the hurt. Everything up to spinal injection of random cocktails. Very scary stuff.
So, after those five months of hell, I went to Mayo clinic. They sat me down for 100 more X-Rays, 3 CAT scans, 2 MRI’s… no partridges or pear trees… but the winning ticket was a tomogram (3-D X-ray, if you will)
Seems my neck was kindof… you know… broken. Yeah. 2 weeks later I was in a halo collar with hip-bone grafted to C1-C3. 8 weeks later I came out of the collar and felt fine and dandy.
That was 11 years now. I haven’t been to a doctor for so much as a physical exam since then. My advice is to visit the pain specialists, try what they offer, but don’t consider it your final option. There’s always another option out there somewhere.
Don’t dismiss the importance of treating pain. While it may not solve the problem, it can certainly improve your quality of life.
I happen to work at a pharmaceutical company that has just launched a drug that’s a treatment for chronic pain, so we’ve been hearing presentations about the importance of pain management.
There is even a drive in the medical community to consider pain as the 5th vital sign (I think that’s the right number).
So anyway, I guess I’m just saying that it can be a valuable component of your treatment, in addition to the actual healing of what ails you.
Ivylad has failed back syndrome. He went to one pain specialist, who is apparently notorious around here for prescribing very potent drug cocktails. He tried Vax-D, acupunture, and massage, to no effect. The doctor continued to write him prescriptions for Oxycodone and Oxycontin. He was a zombie most of the time and would go through withdrawal if he wasn’t on med schedule.
Then he went to another doctor to investigate getting a morphine pump. This doctor got him off most of the pills (he’s now on a patch he changes every three days) and after a month of physical therapy he’s off his walker and using a cane. He’s also no longer a zombie.
Pain specialists can be very helpful, but you need to find one who’s not so quick to whip out the prescription pad. Pain is a symptom of something, so they need to find the cause and treat it, not mask it.
I’m not quite as bad off as ** ivylad, ** but it has severely limited what I ca do. As I told my physical therapist, if I lay on the couch all day, my pain is minor, but any physical exertion, even vaccuming or loading the dishwasher makes me hurt badly for days afterwards.
Worse part about it is that it’s affecting my job. I work in a museum, and we’re setting up a lot of new exhibits for the spring season, which involves a moderate level of physical work. I want to get the things we need to do done, but I’m in so much discomfort that it’s very difficult.
Right now, my doctor has me on several varieties of muscle relaxants and one pain killer. They make me a tad fuzzy, but it’s managable. I’d hate to go any “stronger” than this because I need to have my wits about me when I’m moving thousand-year-old artifacts out of their cases.
I guess I’ll just have to wait to see what the MRI turns up.