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From: wtm@bunker.shel.isc-br.com
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Sympathetic nerve blocks?
Message-ID: <15815@handicap.news>
Date: 28 May 91 04:06:21 GMT
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Fidonet: Chronic Pain Conference

Index Number: 15815

> My doctor has suggested 'sympathetic nerve blocks' after almost 7
> years of disabling chronic pain.

I've been in pain almost 12 years now from a car accident.  At one
point, it was bad enough that I was up to 8 percocet a day.  Right
now, I survive on a Spartan diet of 2 Vicodin and 2 Darvocet a day.

I've been to two pain clinics (as well as to the usual assortment
of chiropractors, orthopedic doctors, neurologist, neurosurgeons,
physical therapists, acupuncturists, etc, etc).  The first pain
clinic was at Yale where they decided to try a Sphenopalatine Ganglion
Nerve Block.  I had this procedure done before by the doctor who
started it, Doctor Milton Reder in NYC.  The Sphenopalatine
Ganglion is at the rear of the nasal cavity so the block is done
with a 8 inch cotton swab with a 15% cocaine solution (yes,
it is perfectly legal but has been highly controversial due
to the use of cocaine).  Yale uses lidocaine instead of cocaine.
After several treatments with no significant results, I found
out that I had such a deviated septum that they could not touch
the ganglion.  So I had surgery to fix my deviated septum.  By
the time my nose had healed enough to tolerate another nose block,
the doctor at Yale who had done it was no longer there and the
next doctor wanted to try some other procedures.

I then learned that Doctor Josef Wang, the doctor who had started
the pain clinic at the Mayo Clinic and later started or ran the
pain clinic at Yale and who had been nominated for a Nobel Prize in
Medicine for his work in Pain Management now had his own pain
clinic about 30 miles away so I started seeing him earlier this
year.  He tried three epidural nerve blocks where he injected
steroids and a synthetic morphine along the spinal column.  Each
helped but only for a period of several hours to overnight.  The
next step is to implant a permament catheter in my back where I can
administer morphine every several hours.  Every two months or so,
I'll stop the injections for a day or so to see if the pain cycle
is broken.  This will be within the next few weeks so I will keep
you informed.

If you are interested, give Dr. Wang a call and get his booklet
on pain management:
   Pain Management of New England
   2440 Whitney Avenue
   Hamden, CT 06518
   (203) 248-1134

I am tired of just surviving life -- I would like
to begin living life again.

You said something about injections of Magnesium -- I thought
that I had tried just about everything but this is new to me.
Any more information?

                                Bill McGarry
                                (203) 337-1518

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