Well it’s Halloween and as always it’s that time of the year that my kids get to be on a sugar rush for the next several weeks!!  I haven’t been having the best of days today, as my pain has taken over my body for the day. For most of the day today I’ve been fighting with pain levels and generally just trying to block out the pain that my body shouldn’t be feeling. It’s at times like today that I sit at home waiting for the phone to ring, telling me that I have a surgery date. Within the next couple of months that should happen. I’ve been told that it could even be as soon as this month that I get the call. I almost hope however that the call will be next month. Not because I don’t want the surgery but because my wife is scheduled for her surgery next week. I couldn’t imagine both of us going for surgery at the same time.

In case you didn’t know in previous posts I had mentioned that I had decided to go ahead with a spinal implant, to try to reduce to pain levels. It took me a while to make the decision however now that it’s been made I know that it’s the right one. It took a lot of research as well as praying, to know that this was the right thing to do. It can be so easy when dealing with something like this to get desperate and make choices that aren’t right at times like these. Who can blame us however because all you want to be doing is living a life as pain free as possible. Every day I see people rushing into making choices, and in a lot of cases you can tell that it’s just out of desperation.

Here in Canada there aren’t  lot of options for treatment. However the one treatment that is available to people who suffer from CRPS is the spinal implant. You can go ahead and get nerve blocks however for me they didn’t seem to have much of an effect on reducing the pain. There was an initial reduction in pain for about the first day then the pain seemed to return. I did see an increase in ankle movement however that now seems to have flat lined and the pain seems to have been getting worse over the last couple of months. After the nerve blocks failed I started looking towards the implant. I was put in touch with Dr. K. Kumar who is a very well respected Neurosurgeon here in Canada. With most of the treatments being in the U.S. it seemed only logical to make seeing him the next logical choice.

After seeing Dr. K.Kumar my brain was swimming with information, and I had all kinds of trouble with trying to process everything he had told me. Part of me was saying that I needed to go for the implant and the other half of me said no way! My brain was saying do you really want to put yourself through this only to have another thing fail. At the same time I was trying to weigh the risks, and were they really worth it to me. At the same time on the positive side it could reduce my pain by 50% if it works. It could also help me manage the pain better. In the back of my head I was also asking myself if this was the right treatment, because there were just as many cons to go with the pros. So I went back to see Dr. K. Kumar again to ask more questions. I walked away feeling good about what he told me, and I told myself I’d made my decision.

What I had to take into consideration was the fact that 25yrs experience in Neurosurgery says something. It says experience! Also able to give me good solid facts both good and bad about the results people see, as well as the risks to those who undergo the surgery. I had to trust the information that I was being given, and make a decision. I started to pray about it and just trusted that God would help me make the right choice. So what words of wisdom might I have for anyone? When your looking at the different treatments that are available don’t make a desperate decision just because your pain is bad and you want it to stop. Think about how it may affect you in the long run both good and bad. Make an educated decision and don’t let others make the decision for you. Most important however ask God to help you make the decisions you need to make.