Hi All......Today is one week since the ablaision....still swollen still icing pain...no headache or wonky head....as a matyter of fact i have not had the wonky head since the ablaision.. ;D...you kno...the feeling like you have a bowling ball on your head...fullness in inner ear canal..GONE!
Its a beautiful day here inn NH sunshine and i have my flip flops on ..iced coffee....Is life getting better??
Yes! "Bowling Ball Head!!" I've had it at one level or another since I woke up from surgery almost 8 years ago. I describe it like a low grade pressure headache in the back of my head--my description is often the "elephant that is sitting on my head." You mean yours is GONE???? How wonderful. I'm sure mine is cause by something that has stretched, scarred or somehow damaged a major nerve--probably more than one--in my occipital area.
It kinda looks like this guy, too.....
(http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee60/Captdeb_photos/stressed_man_clamp_md_clr.gif)
Hopefully I will have good results, too and we can show up in Cinncinatti and share our stories at the headache workshops and roundtable discussions. No one should have to go on like this for 8 years or even 1 year if we find that this works on our particular cases. I'm sure there are other headachers out there whose headaches stem from different sources, but doing tons of research, studying the anatomy, and seeing good specialists who don't dismiss you as drug-seekers or uninformed patients or cry-babies, can give us a better picture of the mechanical aspect of just what the hell is wrong and how to fix it! Even more important is the information the docs can get on how not to let this happen to patients to begin with. At Loyola the new protocol is to position the paitients head prior to anesthesia and make sure they aren't shredding and tearing the nerves and ligaments all over the place (which you would notice if you were awake because you'd be yelling your head off) They don't give you the happy juice until they have positioned you comfortably for your surgery--Their headahe rate dropped by something like 70%--go figure.
At House I did try to tell the anesthesiologist I had neck stiffness just as I was drifting off. During my pre-ops I mentioned headaches and was told ANs didn't cause headaches. What I had was a mild case of occipital neuralgia that the surgery turned into a MAJOR case of occipital neualgia--I had to figure that one out by myself after I was diagnosed with a dozen other conditions and treated with expensive drugs that didn't work and gave me horrible side effects. When all I really have is a simple "wiring problem" with a few options to try to get the "wires" to not send bad signals to my brain anymore. The folks who do this are mainly anesthesiologists who specialize in Pain Medicine--a rapidly gowing field. It's all my Dr Mark Hines does and man does he have some great procedures, however, some are not covered by Medicare or Insurance yet. Prolotherapy and stem-cell therapy are two examples of those. Mostly they are used by elite athletes which speeds up their healing time--all on the up and up--no performance-enhancing illegal stuff.
The ones covered by medicare we are considering are pulsed radiofrequency nerve ablation. non-pulsed radiofrequency ablation, and chemoneurolysys of the nerve, which is a lot like prolotherapy, but covered by Medicare. Prolotherapy involves creating tiny areas of inflamation around the ligaments and tendons you are trying to heal--inflammation is the bodys natural response to healing. Don't know alot about it yet, but still researching.
Anyway, Cin, I wish you sooooooooo much luck and I hope this is the end of your pain or at least bites a big chunk out of it. Hope you feel better soon and remember--"one day at a time, baby!"
Capt Deb
Have a great Thanksgiving!(http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee60/Captdeb_photos/turkey_dancing_lg_wht.gif)