Hey Everyone,
Its been a long time since I've posted, but overall I'm doing ok. about 6 weeks ago, I started physical therapy because I don't feel I received the desired results from the RFA procedure. So far, it is helping more than I expected. However, I feel like I'm "hitting a wall" in the amount physical therapy can improve things. Though I have pain spikes, they are shorter lived. The pain overall is more intermitten and more managable, though it is still leaning on the more frequent than less frequent side of intermitten. I feel stronger and more flexible and actually want to trying to play a sport that isn't too demanding like softball.
As for medication, the Nucynta is still working, but I've developed a little tolerance to it (as I've been on it for quite some time). I think this is where PT helps fill that gap. Also, wasn't having pain shoot down into my foot too often and the pain was more frequently localized......though today I do have pain shooting down (still its nice that this is less frequent and I think PT is responsible for that.). I'm still using Soma muscle relaxants but as before less often than prescribed so a 1 month fill lasts about 2 months.
My doctor has discussed putting me on Lyrica, which I am pondering on. She stated the option to adjust my nucynta dose as well (keep in mind for an opioid narcotic + SNRI, it builds tolerance slowly) and that there was flexibility in my dosing for increase to 100 mgs or a decrease if used with Lyrica or if PT can get my pain reduced more. Should pain reduction not go as desired, I could go with a higher dose of only Lyrica without Nucynta or trying a medium dose of Lyrica and 50mgs of Nucynta or 100mgs of just Nucynta. However, I really don't want to add a CNS depressant the mix of a muscle relaxant and narcotic/SNRI so at this point things will remain the same medication wise and thats fine with me. I realize ill never have pain at 0 for an extended period of time, but at the least it seems more controllable, even if just some of the time :)