Sciatica

Incredible, isn't it? One or two bones in my neck and upper back have had a tendency to slip in and out of place since a heavy fall in my early twenties. Occasionally the bone at the top of my back, just below the one that starts the neck, slips out of place and presses on my windpipe, which can make eating very painful.

I can only assume that, together with the very heavy medication for excruciatingly high blood pressure, some pressure on a nerve has been released.

Truly, I feel like a new woman!
 
Ah, tronchateric bursitis. Twice I've been treated for it (one by the GP, once by an orthopaedic registrar only about 6 months ago) as I've apparently displayed classic symptoms of it and it can be a fairly common result of the trauma caused by the types of hip surgery I've had, so I'm told. Unfortunately neither time did the treatment by cortisone injection help matters, it was a very painful procedure and merely made it hurt more for a week or so!
 
Bloody hell, girls! Just thank your not very lucky stars you're not horses, as you'd have been eaten long ago by Fido and Felix!
 
Shadow Leader said:
treatment by cortisone injection help matters, it was a very painful procedure and merely made it hurt more for a week or so!
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That treatment wasn't around when I was a kid, thank Heaven, or they'd have been peeling me off the ceiling just at the thought. :blink:

Mind you, I would probably have coped with it a teeny bit better than I do the thought of such an injection being administered to my hands or feet (my boss gives detailed descriptions in his op notes because he knows it makes me squirm!).
 
Trust me, you don't want one! The one administered in the hospital was pain like I haven't known in a long time - the needle was massive and he kept moving it around in the muscle tissue, prodding it into different parts whilst releasing the drug.

It's certainly good to know you got over it though - whether or not it is what is contributing to the pain I'm suffering now!

I'd feel the same about the thought of injections in the hands or feet - it's all I can do to stomach the reflex test where they run that stick up your soles.
 
Had cortisone type foot injections in July - it was painful but not the worst I've ever experienced as the specialist did use local. However, I could barely walk that evening as the local wore off - breathtakingly painful..... Pain free for a few wonderful days following but pain back again, maybe not as bad as before, though.

My specialist recommended I try the MBT footwear (based on how the Masai walk!), as the pain I am experiencing is mainly in my toes. So I investigated it, was fairly sceptical, bought a pair of trainers and am very pleased I did. Throws your whole weight/stance onto your heel, which is how, apparently, you should walk and so for me, it's great as my toes get a rest.

However, the Masai obviously don't have much of a need for Wellingtons, so not going to be a great help to me for the majority of the time...:p
 
Flippin' heck - did I say bleating ninny? I've been bleating this afternoon as the left knee's gone nuts! The swelling/heat subsided thanks, I thought, to copious smearings of Voltarol, but today there's none of that but intensely sharp pain, and very tender areas at the back of the knee. The leg feels very sore, too, so God knows what's up. Due at the doc's tomorrow for an asthma review (which is where the nice nursey tells you how wrongly you've been controlling it since she last told you you were doing it wrong - all based on their own instructions... ) so will see if he can have a quick furtle and decide if it needs a wash-out, or perhaps replacement with a solar-powered model! Onwards... but not very quickly...
 
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Had x-rays and a CT scan today after being told in clinic that I shouldn't have been the way I am 6 months ago, let alone now, a year after surgery. The woman I saw was appalled that I hadn't even been x-rayed since I was discharged from hospital following the operation and insisted that further investigations be done. Thank God I've finally seen someone who is interested, the last two registrars I've seen haven't known my history at all (one thought I'd only had an arthroscopy, not that I'd had two arthroscopies and a resurfacing!) and were very quick to say that everything was fine and send me on my way. Ok, so the last one gave me a cortisone jab but other than that was pretty dismissive and insistent that it was 'only' trochanteric bursitis and that the jab would sort it out.....:whistle:
 
Redhead - nooooo, don't!! :lol::lol:

That's the prob, Shadz, one is never told what the proper follow-up procedures are. Years ago I had an underactive thyroid which was sorted out by 18 months of treatment. What no-one told me was that once you've had a naughty thyroid, it should be checked annually. I don't think I had it checked until I began to get ye olde symptoms back about 8 years later, and wondered to the quack if it might be a return. Of what, he asked, which is when he first realised I'd had it, and I realised I should've been regularly tested. :confused:

I hope they've got a grip now, and that whatever is still wrong can be put right so that you don't keep suffering so badly. Best of!
 
The problem is that registrars, as trainee consultants, only stay in one particular hospital for 6 months and then move on to experience another area of expertise before settling on what they want to specialise in, so are totally reliant on whatever their predecessor has put in the notes.

You are also very much at the mercy of the clinic staff who are the ones who fill in the forms according to what the Consultant/Registrar wants done next, e.g. follow-up in 6 months with x-ray on arrival.

I and a few colleagues are currently battling the falling standards of patient care on the admin side of our department since a new "manager" conned her way into her post.

She may have been a good secretary in the private sector, but she is a moderate NHS secretary and an even worse manager. All the secretaries that have been employed by her are all taught only half of the job, none of them know that info has to get onto the notes - even if it means trekking to the other side of the hospital to do it.

Nor do they bother to check the system to see whether or not the clinic staff have actually actioned what the Consultant/Reg has dictated in his/her clinic notes. All they seem to do is sit and type and take long lunch-breaks. There is a hell of a lot more to the job than that, but we cannot make the stupid woman see it.

My own strategy is now to use my position as Clinical Director's secretary to highlight the gaping holes in her knowledge by posting directives from my boss instructing secretaries in the correct procedures. Guaranteed, within 10/15 seconds of my pressing the "send" button, the silly old bag will be on the phone bleating that "I didn't know that".

The problem is that, in the meantime, patient care standards are falling because one person doesn't know the whole of our jobs - and won't be told, which means that the new staff members are not being taught properly and actually resent being told what they should be doing, because they were not properly trained to start with.
 
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