[racheleddie]

I have been experiencing severe low back pain for over a year now, although there has not been a "incident" that started the pain. It began with numb toes, general low back pain, and has progressively gotten worse. I have done PT, traction, 2 blind epidurals, 1 fleuroscopy epidural, 2 MRIS, 1 CT Scan, and a discogram. I have been diagnosed with L4-5 herniated disc, spinal stenosis, arthritis, and disc denerative disease in the mid back. I have now made the scary decision to go with ADR at L4-5 to relieve this back pain, as I am only 46 years old and cannot imagine living the remainder of my life (30-40 years I hope!) with this pain. My options were live with the pain, spinal fusion, and ADR. The Ortho Surgeon said that if I went with fusion I would likely be back in the OR in 10-15 years. I have several questions to see if anyone else is experiencing the same symptons I do, pain med levels, and overall expectations. I have read many of the threads here and many of them seem to offer great hope and others scare me because the seem to be worse off.

I have a lot of pain over the top of the foot. Many of the doctors that i have seen say this is unrelated, a few have acknowledged that this would be related to the back, and I have read on the internet that it is very likely that the back is the source of this pain. For the short periods of time when I have been pain free from the epidural injections and the 7 hours of pain relief from the discogram, this foot pain has gone away, so I feel pretty strongly that this is in fact related to the back injury and am so hopeful that the ADR will relieve this pain.

I also have pain mid back, which they say is denerative disc and a slight bulging T5-6-7. Do you think some of this pain will be relieved with t he L4-5 ADR?

I am currently on Opana 40 twice a day, but it does not offer much relief. I just started this on Friday, so I keep hoping that eventually I am gonna wake up and the meds will work. The Oxycontin and Norco combination seems to work better for me, but the pain mgmt dr I was see was very stingy with the pain meds, and would only give me enough meds to take 2 40 Mg Oxys and 4 Norcos a day, which after several months, no longer worked at these doses. If I took more during the month, then I would be face with no pain meds at the end of the month. It has been a nightmare to find the right combo of pain meds to make my pain level tolerable enough to carry on with my life, such as working. I can no longer do fun things that I used to enjoy such as gardening, shopping, etc. because I pay big time after. Does this pain med regimen seem excessive and out of control? I am 5' 10" and about 190 lbs...don't know if that makes a difference, but I am no little tiny thing!

I am looking forward to using this forum as I go through my ADR journey, as I am sure I will need some encouragement at times that things will get better!

Best of wishes to all of you that are suffering daily from chronic pain!