Texas4Life

I thought about the meds. Understand your point. As you can image, I'm tired after being on all of these drugs and dealing with their side effects for the last few years. I want to see how my body responds by reducing the meds and phasing them out. My vision has changed and I keep thinking one or more the drugs are responsible for it.

Yeah, I shortened my comments; the journey was made more longer and more painful because of our healthcare system failed me. The surgeon, while being overly cautious by not doing the surgery until he knew what was going on in my arms. I get it; I do. Have you ever had an EMG? They are wicked. I thought after having an EMG on my right arm (to test for nerve damage), I'd never have to do that again. But he would not do the surgery, when the left arm started numbing up and becoming useless. He ordered another EMG on my left and waiting for the results in order for his scheduler to call me up and set a date for the second spinal surgery, was also not fun. All this started while I was in rehab after the ACDF. I still had pain from my spinal cord. We couldn't understand what was happening and why it was happening. Then the right arm, just stopped working (last February), by May last year, the left arm stopped working and I sounded the alarm: Something is wrong...seriously wrong. I couldn't help but remembering what you said a long time ago: A lot of patients have to have a secondary surgery after the ACDF, and I knew that was going to be me. And sure enough, here I am.

You have any feelings about Tizanidine? Oxycodone + Acetaminophen (morphine)? I want to finish this course and not refill them. I could re-up the muscle relaxers. But I've been on them, since you told me about methocarbamol years ago....just saying. Thoughts?

So, my pain mgmt doctor and I have decided to push out my 30-day follow-ups to renew meds. I am currently out of the methocarbamol and haven't taken it for about a week. I still have the oxycodone with acetaminophen (morphine)`0-325 along with the tizanidine HCL 4 mg. I don't go back to get renewals on any of my meds until next Thursday. I told the surgeon last week that I still have weird feeling where he described to me that he to pull my two large muscles apart around my spinal cord to get access to the area where he was going to widen the bone structure to make more space for the nerves. It is not pain; it's the feeling that a human being has something inside and done something and it takes time for it to go back to normal and 4 months ago it off the charts with pain and sensation. So it's probably the last thing that happens after a major surgery. I think the muscle relaxer is all that I probably need for that. I want to start phasing out the morphine and the tizanidine and only take the methocarbamol as needed. My body has just been filled with pain killers for years and that can't be good. I have no idea what my "normal" status should be and don't want this to be a "new normal".

My aunts neighbor had the same bilateral foraminotomy. I saw a few weeks ago when he and his family were invited to come to my aunt's Memorial Day cookout. If you'll remember, he went to a different doctor, same floor, same practice....everything as my surgeon. He ended up getting very, very ugly keloids at his incision site where with mine, you can barely make out that I had surgery.

I can't believe the pain that I had. My sleeping hasn't really returned yet Stray. That concerns me some. I learned to not sleep. I've been on Lunesta 3 mg for years; not sure how much more anyone can do about that. Sometimes in the middle of the night when I'm awake laying on either shoulder, I think about how I could not do that before. Just stupid little things that people take for granted. I throughout my arm braces and one neck brace. I have a newer one from the last surgery that I am keeping for an undetermined amount of time.

For my eyes, I found out that I have to have cataract surgery. The technology, even from last year, has changed so dramatically in months for eye surgery, that the eye surgeon, wants me to wait until July because he has insight into what technological changes will be after that time frame and it also gives my eyes time to see if the movement in my eyes will settle down by then. (They've moved some distance in the 4-week period (2 back-to-back appointments) of him examining me). So not out of the woods with surgeries.

The insertion of the EMG needles were bad, but the squeezing the muscle so he could listen to the nerves, is so hard to describe in levels of pain, that I don't think any words I could use would accurately characterize how extraordinarily painful it was. Then being told I have to do it all over again on the left arm, the pain is too much to describe in words. Oh! and then the "senor" female doctor was like, "I hope you don't mind, but these two candy-stripers will be working with me to perform this procedure". Really? He'd jab me with the needle and she'd say, "Well, you really want to put it here" and she'd give some clinical reason why he has to pull it out to re-position the needle and he did this like 3-4 times. You try to protest -- gently -- but it got to the point when I had to say something....to all of them. I remembered what you said about doing my surveys after a procedure, but I still 'shared my opinion'. I expected it to fall on deaf ears.

BTW, have you had any conversations or know anyone else who has had a Bilateral C6:C7, C7:T1 Bilateral Foraminotomy?

So, I have oxycodone w/ acetaminophen (10-325 mg). I don't know what the equivalent is or is if that is a proxy to morphine. That's what my pain mgmt. team has used to manage the pain, from operating room through recovery (today).

Yeah, apparently it is called the PCF. Of the two surgeries, this one was more painful for the first two weeks. Then after that, the itching began, and it still continues 4 months post-op. Not much in the way of pain now; more of a weird sensation where the surgeon pulled the back muscles apart to get access to the surgical areas. I wouldn't characterize my recovery as "painful and brutal" at all.

The Tizanidine (muscle relaxer) seems to work well with my level of "Un-comfortability". How long did he say his recovery took, that mod who had the PCF surgery? I wonder what 6 months to 1-year post-op is like. I can bend my neck to both sides without pain for the first time in my life. It's amazing.