I generally prefer not to whine and cry, because I feel like I truly am blessed in the life God has given me, but I'm having a really bad day pain-wise, and sometimes it makes me feel better just to vent a bit.
As I've touched on in the past, I've gone through multiple surgeries to treat ovarian cysts and resulting abdominal adhesions. Adhesions come from trauma experienced during surgery, so more surgery can only do so much to help, and is typically used only as a last resort, as a temporary fix.
Well, to try to keep a long story short, this very cold winter has been causing me a great deal of adhesion-related pain and illness (just like with every other type of chronic pain, cold makes it worse). I know for a fact that I have no interest in receiving any further surgeries. I also refuse to go back on any narcotic-based pain medications. (At one point I was on Vicodin, Flexeril, and Toradol...all simultaneously. They also had me on anti-nausea meds to combat the sickness from the pain meds.)
That leaves me open to alternative treatments and therapies. If any of you out there have had any experience with these, please let me know.
Hormone therapy. Probably won't work for me. Birth control has done nothing for me to prevent cyst formation, and chemically-induced temporary menopause is usually only used to treat adhesions caused by endometriosis.
Massage therapy. I've heard that a lot of people get great results in using massage to treat their adhesions, but I've also heard some say their pain got worse. Even if it works, it usually requires an extended regimen (not just a single treatment), is very expensive (and rarely covered by health insurance), hard to find a masseuse who knows how to treat adhesions, and is supposed to be incredibly painful while you're experiencing it. (No kidding; you're paying someone to detach stuck-together internal organs from the outside in.) Honestly, even if I could find someone to do it and could afford it...I'm really scared by how much it's supposed to hurt.
Acupuncture. Not gonna lie...I'm too much of a skeptic. Even if acupuncture (the eastern medicinal art of stabbing someone all over with long freakin' needles) can treat pain by blocking/stimulating nerves...all my pain is internal. And there is no way I'm letting them stick those needles in that deep.
So, in the words of LeBron James's Nike commercial..."What should I do?" I'm serious; if anyone has any tips, lemme at 'em.
Anyway, thanks for the vent. I promise to return you to your regularly scheduled scripture interpretations, baby stories that can substitute for sitcom plots, paid advertisements, and untimitigated sarcasm briefly.
1 comment:
I'm so sorry you're suffering with that. I am as well. I've had over 16 abdominal operations after a doc punctured my intestine while removing my ovaries. I was on a vent in a coma. Developed sepsis. Had ostomies. Bowel resections. Wound vacs. Blood transfusions. Flesh eating disease, ventral hernias and repairs with mesh that failed. I currently live in constant pain with a ventral hernia from breastbone to pubic bone. No muscle wall left at all. Inoperable unless it gets to a life or death situation like a bowel strangulation or obstruction. I can't eat red meat, raw fruit or veggies, little fiber. I can't walk for long, very little exercise at all. Can't work. zMy belly is huge. The adhesions and neuromas cause such pain, couging, laughing or sneezing make me cry. I live on narcotics...morphine, opana, gabapentin, robaxin and laxatives. I've been this way since the end of 2005. I have searched allover for alternative treatments without finding any. I stumbled across your blog during one of my searches....thanks for sharing....
tammy
spicytammy@wordpress.com
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