Pain

I try not to complain or to be too negative on my blog but I have been having a rough few weeks and need to vent. For the past 9 years I have been dealing with back pain. I have to herniated discs in my lower back. I don't know what caused them weather it was from cheer leading or bad genes or just bad luck. About 8 years ago I started my journey to find out what was wrong. I had a lot of pain in my lower back. The first doctor I went to did x-rays and the machine where they shoot you full of dye and see what’s going on. Well he didn't find anything wrong with my back. So I went home and dealt with the pain. However the pain got worse so we went to a new doctor he saw that I had two herniated discs. His solution was to do cortisone shots in my back to see if that would help. He took and epidural needle and stuck it in my spine. I could feel so much pressure in my back it was terrible only to find out he was only half way done doing the shot. This was supposed to relieve the pain for a year. It didn't last longer than a month. So I went back and had another one. Still nothing, by this time I had heard things about the cortisone shots and how it is not good for the tissue around the area. I also did some physical therapy. So I went back to dealing with the pain. Right before I got married my parents thought it would be a good idea to see another specialist and see if he recommended anything while I was still on their insurance. Again I described my pain and how it affected my day to day life. I had to do more MRI's and x-rays. Again the doctor said I was too young for surgery and to deal with the pain and do physical therapy. I explained to the doctor I was worried for the day when I had kids and would be in too much pain to pick them up. He just said to watch my weight and deal with it. As the years went on the pain got worse. Now not only was it in my back but in my hip as well as down my leg. Long trips in the car or even just seating on the hard seats during church are killer. I wake up every few hours in the night to switch position because I hurt so much. I have medicine to take for the pain but don't like taking it because I can't sleep after I take it. So in April my mom recommended I go to a place that is specifically for pain care. After much debate I went in. The doctor I met with was really nice and seemed like he wanted to help. After more x-rays and MRI the doctor told me I needed work done on my L5 nerves, so they started with a cortisone injection there. I came back a few weeks later and told them it didn't help. So they did another injection again I felt nothing. So the doctor said to try radio frequency (this is where they send an electrical current down your leg to try and do something to the nerve). Well this wasn't covered by our insurance so it would cost us 160 bucks. I was hesitant to do it because the other procedures didn't work. Well I did it and still didn't get any relief. When I went back a few weeks later the doctor I had been working with had left the practice and I was assigned to a new doctor. After explaining to him how the other treatments didn't work he looked at my file and told me that they were working on the wrong nerve. He said they should have worked on the s1 joint instead. So all the previous pain and money ended up being for nothing. I was very upset but this gave me hope that maybe the new joint would help with the pain. So again I had the treatments done on the s1 joint. I felt no relief and by this time I was really depressed. To know that I would have to deal with this pain every day and to not have it get better. Especially when I got my hopes up that there would be a way to make my days pain free. Well the doctor wanted to try the radio frequency on this joint, again another 160 dollars. However, I was so desperate for pain relief I decided to try it. After a few days I noticed that the pain down my leg wasn't as bad. I was so excited! But the pain in my hip and back were worse. So I went back again. Now the doctor wanted to try doing shots in the SI joint to see if that would help the pain in my hip. (I forgot to mention that during all of this I went back to physical therapy and still wasn't getting any relief) After they did the shot in my hip not only did it not help with the pain but it also made the pain down my leg come back. They did another injection a few weeks later again in my SI joint we are now 8 months into finding something to help, something that was only supposed to take a month to fix and would last years before I felt the pain again. I tried going and doing Decompression but it made it hurt worse and I found out I would have to do over 25 treatments with no help from the insurance. Now I am waiting to go to a specialist to see if he recommends anything different. I have been on his list for 3 months so hopefully it is worth it. I am so sick of being in pain; it is very frustrating and depressing.