Britbike forum Forums General discussion The Rod and Tappet A different trip to the Doctor

Come December it will have been 12 years since myself and my good Wife were hit head on by a truck turning into our path. I have had numerous conversations with several Doctors about the continuing pain in my left heel which suffered two displaced fractures. The common response has been " You were hit by a truck, of course it's going to hurt ". The last so called specialist prescribed a decent dose of Pregabalin that left me almost unable to function properly, a fact to which the specialist simply shrugged. A change of GP led to a visit with a pain specialist, within 10 minutes he had tracked down the nerve in my foot that was causing the issue and proclaimed the reason previous medications had failed was that they had been prescribed in too greater quantity and not to enough places. Anyway, when I left he prescribed three different types of pain killer in small amounts, for my head, spinal cord and heel. He also prescribed a mouth wash! So for the last week I have been rubbing a mouth wash containing lidocaine onto my foot four times a day, bugger me it seems to be working!

Twelve years and for once the light at the end of the tunnel aint just some bloke bringing more work!

That is why they call it "practicing medicine."

Some just keep on "practicing," but never get it right.

What do you call the guy who graduates at the BOTTOM of his medical class?

"Doctor."

Hey Rod, I hope you get some relief from the new treatments. If there is a bright side, at least it hasn't been your kickstart foot that's been hurting all these years. Keep on keeping on!

An oldie but a goodie and absolutely correct!

Funny how it almost doesnt matter how far advanced science and the medical arts have become, it's all still heavily dependent upon the human factor ("component X"), which never carries an ironclad guarantee.

Glad you found a capable doctor & got some things sorted, Rod!

Yeah it's interesting. I'm a little disappointed that the people charged with handing out some pretty serious mind bending drugs seem to have little or know idea how to prescribe then or even how they work. The previous specialist was about to hand me an extra script for Tramadol until she Googled it's interaction with Pregabalin. Apparently it's not that nice.

on a similar tack,
When they finally diagnosed my RA correctly & stopped treating me for pinched nerves I was given a double dose of steroids ( predisone ) and told to see the specialist in the morning.
Now this was at a hospital with a dispensary supposedly run by qualified pharmasists and handed to me by a fully qualified octor.
IT had been 7 hours since I ate & they gave me 6 pills + a 2oz cup of water
Ten minutes after taking them I was in a cold sweat, with internal cramps & halucinating ( I could have done with some of these in my college years ) to the point I thought I was having a toxic reaction & was goning to die.
An hour after taking them I was virtually skipping down the bus isle to the point I almost left the 2 walking sticks behind.
The specialist was furious & rang the hospital RMO while I was still in his rooms as the steroids can be fatal if taken on an empty stomach .
If I had been driving they very well could have been.

I learned many years ago that often a good anti-inflamitory works better than pain medication. At least these days the doctors refrain from prescribing opioids unless really necessary.
I had a head-on in a VW in 1978. After all these years I can no longer predict the weather by what hurts. "One of my legs is shorter than the other, and both my feets too long."
I went to a doctor on Monday to check out my right hand. It's a tossup between RA and CTS until they do a nerve test in July. It's probably both, I've broken that hand at least three times.

I hope that your doctors can bring you some relief.

At 76 years of age, after a life containing four delivery truck wrecks, two motorcycle accidents, falling off a ladder four times, still no broken bones.
WHY, I don't know.

A piece of broken headlight glass (Triumph accident, June 1967) cut a nerve in my right thumb, and that took almost ten years to fully heal, but that's the only long-term damage I've ever experienced.

I did have open-heart surgery in 2000, that involved splitting my chest open, but that doesn't qualify as an "accident."
I am leery of "pain killers," didn't take any when I got home after that operation. I was a volunteer emergency medical tech for a few years before that,
and learned of the addictive qualities of that stuff. The pain was bearable.

Painkillers are a fairly personal thing; tolerance, relief, and risk varies so much between people.

I've never had chronic "unbearable" pain, but sometimes it's been bad enough that you can't really think about anything else and it limits what you can do.

In such cases I've taken a proscribed narcotic like Percocet or Hydrocodone for a day or two until the underlying cause goes away. The relief is wonderful, but I've never felt the least desire to take one after the need is gone. Seen too many toothless emaciated addicts around, I suppose.

But some folks may have a genetic tendency to get addicted, and they have to be REAL careful....

Lannis

You got that right. After an accident in '78 I was given morpine via IV every four hours for the two weeks I was in ICU, I never had any withdrawal symptoms. Once upstairs I got Tylenol 3, and the occasional shot. Once home I had scripts for Tylenol 3 and Percodan. I ended up selling most of the Percodan, even two of those just made me feel like I was back in hospital.
Mind you, a few years later when I broke my ankle they got the dosage of the shots just right. I had some nice dreams during that hospital visit.

Good luck, R Moulding. Old age ain’t for the faint of heart, especially when you are a motorcyclist. Keep at it, and demand answers, diagnoses, and treatments that work from your doctors.

Hope it turns out well for you.

Dave

Always, always, always question the doctor. get a 2nd a 3rd opinion. I had my 1st shoulder surgery at Walter Reed Army Hosptial when I was 17. An entire cadre of about 20 doctors studied me and my case history, then made a collective choice about how to procedd in surgery. After all that, when I went back for a follow-up exam and meeting, the doc told me they misplaced the staples they'd put in my shoulder!

In the very next breath, he asked me if I was ready for them to operate on MY EYE.
Suffice it to say, as a hard ass 17 year old... my response wasn't very nice.

The eye never did get operated on.

RE: opioids, I've had doctors prescribe oxy or hydrocodone after going to the emergency room with the FLU. I questioned the wisdon and legitmacy of this and the doc simply looked at me with an arched eyebrow, not saying a word.

OTOH, after my dad had what all doctors thought was a caridac "event" (but turned out to be a pinched nerve) and was laying int eh Carida Care Unit, I went down to see him. He was grinning like a Chesire Cat. Looked right at me and said, "hey the doctors gave me some morphine last night" Me, "yeah?" He was like, "i liked it and now I finally understand why you do drugs. I get it".

Seriously tho, addictive drugs are no joke. By now I've thrown away more painkillers than I ever took.

As the saying goes, specialisation is the process of learning more and more about less and less, until you eventually know everything about nothing.
Like it or not, after the high entry requirements and years of study, GPs tend to treat the more common ailments, and know which type of specialist to send the more esoteric woes to.
Orthos tend more towards the "acute care" side of things; such as broken bones and joint replacements and the immediate post-operative care. Once the bones have healed, they've done what they know intimately, and are out of their field.
In this case, it seems a good pain specialist was just the shot for a chronic condition, which is great news.