Hey all, it's been a long weekend leading up to my doctors appointment today. I had a thing at the lodge on Saturday, was on my feet having to put on my happy face in front of a number of other people while I delivered a lecture and a few other things that lasted the better part of 3 hours. I never realized how something so simple as standing up in front of people and giving a lecture can increase your pain so much for so loooong. I feal as though I'm still recovering from that; now I have my doctors appointment to recover from as well, and I feel worse tonight than I did Saturday night. My back is at a solid 8, it was a 9 when I walked out of the office, it was a pretty brutal visit.
So I went in like normal, my appointment was at 2:20, so naturally, since they always make me wait for at least an hour, I was there at 2:18. Phenominally, they called me back at 2:22, but it was for a UA. Of course that wasn't a big deal, since I was walking toward the bathroom when they called me, then they made me go back out to the lobby and wait another 5 minutes, and called me to the exam room. I had to wait there the hour, I would've prefferred the lobby lol. I finally went out and asked the nurse what was going on, and asked her why I hadn't been taken to Xray yet, so she looked up my chart and said "oh you're right you need an Xray," and sent me to the Xray room. Got their Xrays done, and the doc walked in not 2 minutes after I got back to the exam room.
Basically, he said I'm just barely healed up enough to safely start some light PT. He's going to order 6 weeks at 2Xs per week, and then I have to go back to his office. He said at that point, hopefully, we'll be able to start the more strenuous PT, and go to 16 weeks at 3Xs per week. I reminded him that work comp protocol only allowed for a maximum of 16 weeks at 3Xs per week, he said that I should only have 3 weeks that are't covered under their protocol, and what was left over from before my surgery, and that if they didn't want to pay for that, he would cover it out of his own pocket; that came as quite a shocker to me.
Next he asked if I had recieved approval for the patches that he ordered months ago, no not yet, so he walked out of the room, came back 10 minutes later, and said, "you can pick up your patches on Wednsday from _____ Hospital, I'll drop of the written orders over their on my way home, and it will keep you covered until your next appointment." He also said he is ordering enough to change them every 48 hours, as we had previously discussed.
Well, after getting my meds finally taken care of (I honestly don't know what strings he pulled or what, or if he's having them billed to his practice) he then announced, " so now I get to hurt you again," he said this with a very sadistic smile on his face, and proceeded to tell me that he needed to check my range of motion in my back. This is why I almost needed a wheel chair to get out of his office.
Well, tomorrow I have to call the PT place, and get it worked out for me to start pt at some point. I'm sure I'm going to have to wait for approval on that, but we'll see what happens. Apparently, I should have sessions available from before my surgery, that work comp should have already paid for, that my doctor told me not to use, and save them for after surgery (he says they pay for the whole requested block of PT in advance, that way the therapist knows that s/he's going to get their money ahead of time, I hope he's right on that point), if possible, I'm hoping that I might be able to start PT as early as tomorrow or the next day, but we'll see what happens.
On the PM side of things, there isn't one yet, but the doctor said he's going to call work comp on wednsday and see why they've been dragging their feet. He also said he's going to call my attorney too, and see what he can come up with. He said he'll keep up my meds until a PM can take over, but he said that he thinks that it would help immensely if I can get some shots and stuff to try to help the CRPS symptoms.
Anyways, that's about it for now. I went ahead and met my dad for dinner tonight, but besides that, I'm in so much pain, I don't think I'll be doing much of anything for the next day or two besides sitting around and moaning lol. Hot shower didn't help, and muscle relaxer helped my leg spasms but not the back spasms. OOOOyyyyy 
I hope everyone is having a good week, and less pain than I'm experiencing right now. Take care all, and God bless.