An update

Hey everyone, I thought I would let you know that so far, my recovery from the Radio Frequency Neurotomy is going fairly well. I had some strong muscle cramping yesterday, and i have had some weakness on the left side of my body (as the proecedure was done on the left medial branch nerves), but so far nothing so bad to keep me from going out of the house and getting things done. I still can only tolerate short car rides, so that its probably my biggest limitation. Walking is fine, though I was told I have a bit of a limp while walking, which is probably from one side of the body being a little weaker then the other. Sitting is also still a challenge, so at the moment, lying down or going for a nice walk seem to be the best as far as keeping my pain levels down. There is a slight sun-burn like feelings radiating from about 1.5 inches away from one of the needle sites but this again is tolerable.

 

 It should be noted that the slight burning feeling and trouble sitting on surfaces outside of vehicles is from today as I have not taken any pain medication at all. Yesterday, I took the max dosing of my medication and with the exception of a few pain episodes, it did very well to control my pain even while sitting (errr except in vehicles). Don't worry, I will take my meds latter today, but I need to see how my body feels without them so that I can see what symptoms I have and keep track of it, before I cover it up with pain meds.

 

For those of you who wanted more information on the "lite" version of RFN i received, heres some information: Pulsed RF (PRF) utilizes brief 'pulses' of high-voltage RF (300 kHz) electric current to produce the same voltage fluctuations in the region of treatment that occur during conventional RF treatment, but without excessive heating that might produce tissue coagulates. The heat generated is instead dissipated between pulses. PRF produces a transient inhibition of evoked synaptic activity and classic thermal RF (TRF) produces a lasting inhibition. Both TRF and PRF treatment induce distance-dependent tissue destruction under the stimulating needle, but the effect is more pronounced with TRF. These findings suggest that the acute effects of PRF are more reversible and less neurodestructive in nature than the TRF mode, even in normothermia conditions. Proposed pulsing is 20 ms, temperature should be less than 42°C and voltage less than 60 kHz.

Mindy,

Thank you very much hon, and thanks for the prayers :). Now that the left side is done, I have to go back for the right side on November first. I have a good feeling that once the other side is done that ill experience significant pain relief

Today is my first day back to work. (Now working days btw, same as before with 12 hour shifts at a governmental operations office, only theres more people to deal with lol). The ride to work this morning was fairly painful, about 8 on the pain scale, but it was atleast tolerable and about 80 percent of the pain was on the right side/non surgical side. This is actually good news as over the past 2 days I've had only mild to mild moderate pain on the left side where I got the RFN, yet the pain on the right side has been moderate to severe. It generally takes about 1 week to notice results, but I started noticing results in about 3 days (this is uncommon but I do remember reading that some people get immediate results). I have off Monday and Tuesday so ill get some more recovery time then.

So the procedure was atleast a partial sucess and possibly a huge sucess. Its amazing how much more pain I now feel on the untreated side. Even with pain medication, I'm still at about a 7 but only on the untreated side, as I can honestly rate my pain as 3 on the right side, noticable but easily tolerated. The doctor was definately right then about me having the inflamed nerves and RA.

Now I'm actually excited about going to get the other side treated! If I could get my pain level down to say a 3 for the next 6 months, WOW that'd be great. My only fear is that I've been on the Nucynta (tapentadol) for going on 5 months now with daily dosing and once my pain comes down on both sides, I plan on stopping the medication, with tappering ofcourse. I'm definately not addicted, and I have not been abusing it, as I've kept within the dosing guidelines pretty much to a T. However, I definately know that I have built a dependancy on the medication, so withdraw will happen. From what I understand, its not as bad as the withdraw from oxycodone or hydrocodone from the narcotic withdraw effects, but that because of the NE inhibitor effects, some anti depressant withdraw symptoms will be dealt and can be quite noticable. I'll deal with that card when it comes though :)

It took about 2 weeks for all of the post-op effects to go away when I had the RF's done. At that point I was able to tell the one on my neck was beginning to work. The one for my back had little to no effect. My dr had told me it usually takes about two weeks to start noticing a difference.

I hope yours will be a success.

Susie