I went to see a Musculoskeletal specialist this morning. What a fucking waste of time that was. I’ve been on this treadmill of specialists before and I know it’s rare to find a treating physician that you relate to and feel like you can trust on an initial consultation, but rarely have I met one where an outright distrust and disrepect was formed on the initial meeting.
My appointment was for 11.10am. I arrived there five minutes early as is my habit so as not to keep the very busy and important doctor waiting. Naturally they don’t feel that our time is quite so valuable, so I didn’t get ushered into the consulting rooms until 11.30am. Where I was greeted by a masseuse saying that she was going to give me a complimentary massage before I saw the doctor. Huh? Anyway, I thanked but no thanked the masseuse (I hate being all slimed in oil, makes my skin feel like it’s all clogged and oppressed – i know strange choice in word but there it is) and she bought me a cup of tea instead. :S After that she gave me a heat pack and sad the doctor would be with me in a moment….. 12.05pm and the doctor comes in and starts poking my back and neck a bit, then asks me for my story. So I sat up and told him my miserable story about my now four car accidents and what my back pain was like before this most recent one and how it’s been positively unmanageable since. He lamented the modern propensity to treat pain with heavy medication and indicated that he felt that heavy medication wasn’t the best way to go, as it creates a cycle of dependence and can also cause depressive episodes and basically drugs are to be avoided. He also seemed to sympathise with the experience and difficulties of being stuck in a cycle of chronic pain.
Anyway, he asks me what treatments I’ve had in the past and I give him the Reader’s Digest version of the chiropractors, physiotherapists, acupuncturists, neurologists, orthopaedics etc that I’d seen over the years. He said he wanted to so some manipulation on me and to do so wanted me to relax fully using some ‘happy gas’ nitrous oxide before doing some manipulation. Now my physio calls what they do manipulation or manipulative therapy, so that’s what I was expecting. I sucked on his gas… and why not? Thought it might kill the pain for a few minutes if nothing else… got me a nice buzz on, when he came back in, he unexpectedly did some full on chiropractic bone crunching on me, and I was a bit dopey to protest.
When the gas wore off, he said there you go – that should alleviate your pain for a while, but if you’re muscles aren’t strong enough to help the spine keep it’s proper alignment, it will all go to shit again anyway (my words not his). So Missy-Lou, you need to exercise to get stronger. … tell me something I don’t know! So then he went into some strange lecture telling me how there is two types of pain, one that is your body telling you about something that is going to happen that is dangerous and life threatening, and one that is your body remembering a dangerous or life threatening pain. And then he looked at me intensely and said, your pain is not life threatening. To which I looked back at him and said I was well aware that my pain is not dangerous or life threatening, it is however severely impacting on my ability to function normally, and that I wasn’t looking for a miracle cure here, but was hoping to reduce the current pain levels back to what I consider ‘normal’ and manageable. Whereupon he asked me what I wanted to do to achieve that. 😐 Fuck… that’s your job dude! I said I didn’t know because none of my normal management techniques (outlined to him what I was doing) weren’t cutting the mustard and what did he suggest I should try???
Three very important things he said 1) don’t sleep on your stomach. 2) don’t read in bed. 3) don’t fall asleep on the couch. Check – no problem, I said, I never do any of those things… what else have you got? Ummm… be careful how you bend, stretch, carry things. Check – already do that. Avoid doing any overhead jobs like hanging out laundry, avoid doing push me/pull you jobs like mopping and vaccuming. Check – have been avoiding them for years. What else have you got? Errr… perhaps we should have you participate in a pain clinic to learn some coping techniques. Check and double check.. Belmont clinic in 1994 and RBH in hospital clinic in 1997. WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU GOT?
Anyway the long and the short of this abortive visit is he didn’t seem to know what to do with me to alleviate my flared up condition. For all his earlier anti-drug stance, he did however send me home with some more prescriptions – Tramal for pain, Valium for a relaxant/sedative and Endep, which I believe is an anti-depressant (reckons if I’m not upset about being in pain, I’ll find it easier to cope :S) and suggested I take these in conjunction with the Panadeine Forte, Voltaren and Mogadons that I’m already on.
Very telling… he didn’t request that I come back and see him again. What a fucking waste of time.
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