I'm glad you feel easier. I did not want anyone to feel DRRegan was a bad surgeon from my unlike of the person.
My symptoms first were pain in between my shoulder blades or when i rotated my trunk. There was a machine in physical therapy which started causing more and more pain where you sit and rotate to more weight. Side to side. That really hurt at the end before i told my therapist i thought it hurt too much to do it.
In the beginning it would take a lot to trigger this pain in the shoulder blades and it was easier to make it go away. I would hike about 2 miles up hill before it hit. Laying down flat was the solution or changing activity. It did spread around to my thoracic spine, but i could kind of tell where it started.
By the end it hurt really bad sometimes just to go into the grocery store for a few minutes and i had abandoned groceries needing to sit in my car .
But a sharp pain between my shoulder blades was the end and radiating it seemed everywhere. I also had pain in my ribs and kind of muscle spasms.
My surgeon tried steroid shots in my thoracic spine. They did absolutely nothing.
At this time i had already had ACDF Cervical 4-7. Then a new hip and surgery on my knee so during all that my thoracic calmed down as i was always recovering from surgery.
In Jan'09 my spine surgeon put hardwear in most of my thoracic spine to see if that would help. WEll I woke up with pain worse than childbirth. Found out 5 months later i had a muscle inflammatory condition . My muscles being cut was terribly painful and i really did a lot of crying. Had seizures, i said from the awful pain.
WEll in the summer, stilll no relief so i asked if i could have discography to prove it was the discs. He agreed and off I went to another painful procedure. The first disc this doctor did was my really bad one. More crying , more pain worse than childbirth. So when it came to the other thoracic discs i rated them like a 5 or 6 as the first was the worse. Not enough pain generated for DrRegan to operate on them. But i was really comparing them to the first horrible horrible one.
My surgeon got the results first hand from the doc that did the discography the next morning saying i definately tested positive for disc pain.
So the planning for surgery began.
A few days before my original surgery date something happened to T11-12. horrible pain to ride in a car or sit. I think the hardwear had come loose or broken or something. WHen my original surgery was cancelled a few days later i thought i would die with these 2 pain generators. At that time my pm doc fired me too.
But always the burning stabbing spreading pain to the shoulder blades. Ice worked the best for me. My pm (new one) ordered me a tens unit I think it worked while it was on , but no lasting relief. Same with the ice, once i thawed out, pain was back.
I was fired from my special ed teaching job before the spine really kicked in so i have not been working .
Just remembered another trigger , leaning over children's desks in school.
Have you had discography done? How do you know it is that one disc level?
Where are you from and where are you living now? Sorry i am being nosey just don't answer if you don't want to , i certainly would not be offended
judy
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