Male scheduled for my 3rd epidural with steroids next week for on-going spinal stenosis, relieves pain for a few days, then back to pain.
Will go for minimally invasive micro laminectomy next, tired of treating symptoms and not the root cause.
In that procedure surgeon will remove parts of lower vertebrae that is pinching the nerve bundle, nerves that progress down each leg.
Success rates of better than 70%, it's a gamble. But willing to accept that rather than end up on addictive pain pills for life.
3 to 6 months recovery period before active lifestyle again, cannot risk disturbing the "fix". Giving up flip turns in lap swimming for quite a while. Supplemental covers the other 20% that medicare won't pay.
Cash paying patients suffer $35k to $45 K for the procedure.
Medicare pony's up only about $6,500, which the surgeon must accept, no extra cash changes hands.
Supplemental covers the 20% that medicare will not pay.
Honestly surgeons should be paid hourly like technicians. $800/hr or something like that. For a 2 hour procedure, $1600. Another $5k for facility and support staff. Looks like medicare is on point...
I understand everyone has different beliefs, and personally, I fall extremely short of what I should be, but I just took some time to pray for you and your procedure. I really hope the root cause is fully resolved.
Go for surgery if you have neurological symptoms (loss of sensation, motor function, etc). If its pain, try your best to avoid surgery and find the right physiotherapist to help you be pain free. Spine surgery is risky and there is a risk of cascading failures.
Don't completely trust any anesthesiologist (pain management) or neurosurgeon (for surgery) or chiropractor or random folks advice to do yoga/stretch. Spend quite a bit of time understanding the anatomy, read up on everything and maybe you will find the right set of exercises to help relieve pain. Troubleshooting disk/spine/nerve issues is very hard and most doctors don't have any time to investigate it deeply. They just look at MRI. There are lots of people with the same problems showing up on MRI, but they are pain free.
Have already tried chiropractic, PT, several back exercises daily for a year or more, got recommended by 2 customers to a doc who is a specialist in radio ablation of the sensory nerves in the lower spinal region (medicare requires 2 epidurals 2 weeks apart before they would approve the RA). The RA worked great for less than a year, had another RA, worked for several months. 1 month ago had my 3rd RA, after that is when the pain got rather serious, follows the sciatic nerve across the buttocks and down each leg to the foot. Lately it alternates from each side, several days on one side, then several days on the other side.
I have not requested serious pain pills, applying clove oil (eugenol) mixed with benzocaine all over the lower back and buttocks, (lidocaine 5% is useless) wait 10 to 15 min, then can arise in morning from bed for a day's work, yet nagging pain most of day. I refuse OTC NSAID's as they can damage the heart over time. My spinal X-ray looks like an F1 racetrack. Doc says scoliosis, yet no one in my family has this genetically. At some point it just get's so frustrating you start to realize that surgery may be the only way out. Spoke to an 80 year old once who said he had the procedure, they had him up and walking the hospital floors after he awoke from the anesthesia, let him go home next day (I guess his was uncomplicated and straightforward).
Friend, as many others are saying, you should try to avoid surgery as much as possible.
Check out moveu.com - it's cheap (and free to start if you want for their drip marketing to send you a coupon code) and full of excellent information, videos, community etc for fixing yourself. I have no affiliation - just a happy user.
Many people have been able to fix situations that the butchers (surgeons) assured them they could only treat with surgery. And there's many more who have had spinal surgery who say they're now stuck for life with a terrible situation.
It was surprising to see incidence of death by cesarean is almost 13 per 100k. It is commonly thought as the safest way and half of all births in my country are via cesarean.
Here in Argentina the nurses discourage you to seek it, then they blame the anesthesiologist is not available. We have had 2 with cesarian and one friend was in so much pain that she had to ask for a cesarian too.
I've heard a few times now that giving birth while lying on the back is a relatively modern invention and that for most of history women adopted squatting or leaning forward positions.[1] And that the back position is actually much more painful. How much does laying on the back increase the pain to the point where an epidural is necessary? Is it still necessary in the other positions?
Interesting to find out that the contents of epidurals are not standardized across facilities. If that is the case, then how can one definitely opine on the safety of them when the contents are locally designed cocktails?
There's a very strong podcast series about the common failure of Epidurals: "The retrievals" season 2, by serial productions.
I found it rather eye-opening. The series includes reporting on a conference of the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology (SOAP) where the professionals in this field also found it eye opening. (mostly episode 2)
I don't bring this up to say that actually Epidurals suck, just to bring attention to the fact that they can fail, and that the system has historically handled such failure really poorly, and that the system itself isn't very well aware of this issue. This isn't just opinion from some podcast, but also admitted by the professionals working within this field.
It's also something valuable to be aware of when you or your partner is planning to have an epidural, because there is real space (and even a need) for advocacy for the patient when an epidural fails and the woman giving birth is in excruciating pain.
HARD disagree. Watch “the business of being born”. We’ve turned a fairly routine extremely biologically conserved process into this insanely traumatic experience.
... Except when they injure your spine, like with one of my friends. I'm not sure why women choose painless childbirth, which is not only potentially bad for them, but for their newborns as well. My wife gave birth to 3 children, two in the US, and doctors were shocked she didn't want them. Yes, it hurts. The moment your child is born, all pain is gone, and you're in the most beautiful state ever, and this creates even a stronger bond, knowing what you had to go through to bring a child to life! Men, women - we're all weaklings today. When I think about our ancestors and the sword-and-spear bloodbath battles they fought in to protect their families, we don't have such men and women anymore! Pain is an essential part of life. Chronic pain is a different story, of course.
My wife had knee replacement surgery two weeks ago. She was given an epidural for the procedure and it worked well for her. Our two children were born back in 79 & 82 (20th century) and epidurals were available but only as some sort of last resort so she did not get them.
> This is partly because there aren't enough anesthetists
For those of you who didn't think this was a word (which was me 60 seconds ago) it is a word, and is technically correct as opposed to anesthesiologists
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 38.0 ms ] threadWill go for minimally invasive micro laminectomy next, tired of treating symptoms and not the root cause.
In that procedure surgeon will remove parts of lower vertebrae that is pinching the nerve bundle, nerves that progress down each leg.
Success rates of better than 70%, it's a gamble. But willing to accept that rather than end up on addictive pain pills for life.
3 to 6 months recovery period before active lifestyle again, cannot risk disturbing the "fix". Giving up flip turns in lap swimming for quite a while. Supplemental covers the other 20% that medicare won't pay.
Cash paying patients suffer $35k to $45 K for the procedure.
Medicare pony's up only about $6,500, which the surgeon must accept, no extra cash changes hands.
Supplemental covers the 20% that medicare will not pay.
Steve Kerr's advice after his own back surgery complications (albeit microdiscectomy, not a laminectomy) make me hesitant:
"If you're listening out there, if you have a back problem, stay away from surgery... Rehab, rehab, rehab. Don't let anybody get in there."
Don't completely trust any anesthesiologist (pain management) or neurosurgeon (for surgery) or chiropractor or random folks advice to do yoga/stretch. Spend quite a bit of time understanding the anatomy, read up on everything and maybe you will find the right set of exercises to help relieve pain. Troubleshooting disk/spine/nerve issues is very hard and most doctors don't have any time to investigate it deeply. They just look at MRI. There are lots of people with the same problems showing up on MRI, but they are pain free.
I have not requested serious pain pills, applying clove oil (eugenol) mixed with benzocaine all over the lower back and buttocks, (lidocaine 5% is useless) wait 10 to 15 min, then can arise in morning from bed for a day's work, yet nagging pain most of day. I refuse OTC NSAID's as they can damage the heart over time. My spinal X-ray looks like an F1 racetrack. Doc says scoliosis, yet no one in my family has this genetically. At some point it just get's so frustrating you start to realize that surgery may be the only way out. Spoke to an 80 year old once who said he had the procedure, they had him up and walking the hospital floors after he awoke from the anesthesia, let him go home next day (I guess his was uncomplicated and straightforward).
Check out moveu.com - it's cheap (and free to start if you want for their drip marketing to send you a coupon code) and full of excellent information, videos, community etc for fixing yourself. I have no affiliation - just a happy user.
Many people have been able to fix situations that the butchers (surgeons) assured them they could only treat with surgery. And there's many more who have had spinal surgery who say they're now stuck for life with a terrible situation.
It made it emotionally difficult to get surgery again.
disclaimer: I know nothing about this
[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260401-women-were-never...
I don't bring this up to say that actually Epidurals suck, just to bring attention to the fact that they can fail, and that the system has historically handled such failure really poorly, and that the system itself isn't very well aware of this issue. This isn't just opinion from some podcast, but also admitted by the professionals working within this field.
It's also something valuable to be aware of when you or your partner is planning to have an epidural, because there is real space (and even a need) for advocacy for the patient when an epidural fails and the woman giving birth is in excruciating pain.