Back in the Real World

Returned from a nice trip to the beach to find a big stack of denial letters from the insurance company and other health insurance bills. Lovely. But, I had an equally large stack of wonderful cards and notes - so thank you!

It took me about a month and a half to get an appointment with a certain "pelvic pain specialist" in NYC -- since I'm pursuing things with Hopkins and have an appointment there next week I almost cancelled but I decided to go incase things didn't work out with Hopkins. The doctor was young and seemed knowledgeable but was one of the more arrogant I've seen. He actually laughed about choices my other doctors and I have made. I'm glad he thinks it's comical and absurd that I had numerous doctors telling me to go on Lupron. That was annoying -- particularly since he didn't even look at their records.

While taking my history he clearly didn't think I had a nerve problem and then after examining me he back peddled and came to the conclusion that I may have a problem with a distal branch of the pudendal nerve. I couldn't believe it - I thought I was past hearing "pudendal nerve problem". Apparently not. He wants to put me on Elavil. Originally he wanted to try me on Lyrica (again) but I had bad side effects last time so he decided on something else. I may try it since anti-depressants are the one class of drugs I haven't tried and from what I've read, a lot of people with nerve problems have luck with Elavil (aka Amitriptyline).

He also wants to do a nerve block next week and even mentioned down the road a spinal cord stimulator. This is essentially an implanted pain device in your spine. Commonly used for nerve pain. NOT something I'm interested in. When I asked if you could use that while pregnant he was laughing and saying how great it would be during labor. Yeah, keep on laughing buddy. Am I laughing? No. So, the verdict is out on this guy.

Hopefully things will go well with Hopkins and I can make some progress there before going down a path with this guy. It's just frustrating because at the Mayo Clinic they laughed at the prospect that I could have a pudendal nerve problem. A few days before that, a top pudendal specialist, Dr. Antolak, gave me a pudendal diagnosis. My physical therapist thinks it's genitofemoral/ilioinguinal. Who knows. Can someone just figure me out already?