[Maria]

It's a relatively young specialty tho really managing pain has been around a long time it's just under more scrutiny and control now so regular doctors no longer want to prescribe this catagory of drugs nor should they with a specialty dedicated to pain management.

I wanted to back up here and state that it seems a good doctor would want to see that one had exhausted conservative measures before jumping into offering surgery as spine surgery isn't as predictable as many of the other orthopedic surgeries out there with regard to outcome so maybe if you agreed at least to trying an ESI and it didn't work for you that might bode better for you than just flat refusing them or referral to PM. You don't have to take opioid pain medication for pain relief and I can understand with a young child why you may not want to take pain meds at all tho the ESI or other injections may well be worth a try. They actually did help me greatly for 10 years that I got them (not the case with everyone tho).

Just thinking you should try to help yourself so you can work on getting your other surgical opinions/options. Bed is bad for the body period and if taking a pain medication helps one to keep the rest of the body up and going (which it has for me) then it's well worth it vs. allowing one's whole body to decompensate thru prolonged bedrest.

good luck w/all. You may want to try talking with Mark Mintzer (mmglobal) here.