Ah depression. Welcome back. It hasn't been long enough since you were last here. So there I was sipping my coffee and letting my tail do what it wanted. It was currently tormenting a little kitty, twitching just out of reach every time it would try to catch it. No clue where the cat came from since we don't have one but then again I don't really have a tail. Suddenly out of the blue I had a sharp pain racing down the outside of my arm to the base of my hand. That brought the day dream to a quick end. This has been happening more and more often. It really hurts like hell. I had thought it might be the result of my job ( I wish) since I type a lot. I spend 8 hours a day on the computer for work.
The very first time it happened I checked it out online. Got to love WEB MD, the Hypochondriac's best friend. It wasn't carpal tunnel syndrome, thank God ! I know a few people with that and it sucks. Besides with my back as bad as it is I really do not need something else in my hands. What I did find out is that it is basically sciatic pain in my arm instead of my legs. Oh whoopee. Another sign my back sucks. But hey wait a minute. My issues are all in my lower back usually called the Lumbar region. It can't be my back, I don't have any issues with my cervical region.
It happened a couple more times. Not even very often so I asked my PCP at my checkup. She suggested a brace around my forearm. I found one kind of cheap ( Yes I admit I am a cheapskate.) and I wore it regularly. It still happened and was not very frequent maybe one or two times every couple of weeks. I will admit it hurt a lot. It feels like a red hot knife slicing down the outside of my arm right to the base of my hand on the outside where it feels like a spike was shoved into it where the hand meets the wrist.
All of this started back in early June of last year. Since then it has gotten more and more frequent. I finally asked my pain management PA. She has set up a CT scan on my cervical spine to see what issues are growing there in the dark. I have never had a CT scan above my thoracic spine. As I said above all my issues have been in my lower back. Now it looks like it has spread upward further than I had wanted or better yet hoped. I had my fusion just about specifically to try and slow down the degeneration of my spine. I had hoped that it would buy me 8 or 10 years of relief similar to how I got relief from my first surgery. Well that got crushed by my last CT scan of my lumbar spine.
I got the results on December 8th. Yep I do remember the exact date. The news was from my point of view horrible. The people over at my PM clinic were probably throwing a party. I had herniated discs at T12 through L3. Bone spurs growing in the nerve canal where they were rubbing against the nerves and best of all bone spurs at the nerve roots of L3, 4 and 5. The nerve root is where the nerves exit the nerve canal along the spine and branch out to control different portions of the body. That was a nice one two punch below the belt. It took me just about 2 months to pull myself back out of that depression and my monkey tail helped. Shameless plug : You can read about my tail beginnings here : http://www.dailykos.com/...
That out of the way I'm going to swing on down below the designer orange peel on my tail. Feel free to follow with tails of your own or just slide on down like usual. I'd recommend the tail myself, more fun.
This is about depression. I know it is such a depressing subject but right now I am trying to prepare for more depressing news. I really don't know what the newest CT scan will reveal. I am scared that it will show damage on par with my lumbar region. I do not know what my surgeon will recommend once he takes a look at it. I do know he is not going to like the CT scan of my lumbar spine. I am scared he will recommend another fusion or even multiple fusions. I don't know if I can go through that again. 9 1/2 hours on the table for the first one was about my limit. I sure don't want to go back through all of that.
My first fusion did relieve my pain I had before surgery as well as the numbness in my legs but t didn't last even 5 years. I wound up with more pain in my spine and the numbness is back as well as the sciatic pain. It seems like it was not really worth it. 3 years of not much sciatic pain and numbness for all of the new pain and it came back. The trade off isn't what I had hoped. I had hoped for a much better return on my investment. I had hoped for great results. Instead I got not much of a return. Can you blame me for wondering if I should do it again ? Can you blame me for wondering how much mobility I will lose from more surgeries ? With all of these negatives I had to fight back before it got really bad.
So to combat all that crap spinning around in my head I am trying to enjoy some more tail fantasies. Hey I know it isn't real but it sure fun to imagine life with one. Just imagine all the fun and trouble I can get into with that furry little appendage. Wow the possibilities are amazing. The naughtiness is so fun ! Hanging upside and reading the news paper can be fun. Specially if you do it outside. Have to say the cops need to lighten up about people hanging upside down over public sidewalks. Maybe they are just jealous they don't have tails. I must say the tail can help. It pushes the worries away for a bit. Too bad reality keeps crashing back in.
We all have different ways of coping with depression. Some work much better than others. People in chronic pain deal with a hell of a lot of depression. It goes hand in hand with chronic pain no matter what the cause. It can also hurt the fight against the pain. It can sap your will to keep fighting. Depression causes changes in the body that can actually increase your pain making you work against yourself. Dealing with depression needs to be part of dealing with chronic pain and should be part and parcel of the treatment plan. Too bad so many doctors ignore this portion of treatment.
I have never had any treatment for depression as part of my pain management. Every time I go in I fill out this questionnaire asking a bunch of questions like have I had any alcohol, have I gotten narcotics from another doctor and near the top have you been suffering from depression. I always answer yes. I realize I am fighting it. I try and keep my public persona as a kind of goofy, nice guy with a slightly warped sense of humor going so no one knows what I am going through at any time but I know what is going on inside. So even answering yes to that question and telling them when it is worse than usual when I am in the exam room with the PAs, nothing has ever been done. At no time was I ever referred to a shrink to deal with my depression.
Society has a bias against those who need to see a shrink.See even I have it, I call them shrinks instead of psychiatrists or psychologists. There is a feeling that people who need psychiatric help are lesser people. It is similar to the bias against people who need pain medications. So it is a one two punch to the gut to have a doctor tell you that you need psychiatric help. We have a tendency to hide our need for help from even our closest friends. We don't let it out we are getting help. We don't want our friends to look down at us. We feel they will turn their backs on us and we really need our friends. We need our social network to survive. Having our friends turn their backs on us is a huge fear. So we hide our need even from ourselves.
I guess I am a little odd. I am not hiding my need. I am not hiding my fight against chronic pain. I am blaring it out to anyone who wants to read it on the internet. Believe it or not it is a kind of therapy for me. It allows me to channel my anger into an allowed channel instead of doing something stupid like strangling a person who pops off with a stupid comment like "Well if you would just lose some weight you wouldn't have back problems." It allows me to channel my anger against my PM clinic and the insensitive PAs there without having to head to jail for decking one of them. (Violence will not solve the issue but it sure is fun to dream about sometimes. Come on I bet everyone of you has pictured yourself hitting someone who has just done something dumb.) So we come to the end of another diary. The tail has made another appearance and not mentioned Governor Jiggles in his bikini one time, well change that to just one time. So until next time I will be hanging around upside down by my tail. If you see me feel free to say hi.