Red Tape & The Unwelcomed

Red Tape....the request for services going to Kentucky to go to Boston to approve...Why is there always a middle man? Shouldn't we streamline, our tax dollars at works...

So why I wait for my Doctor to submit a claim for my Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy or Complex Regional Pain Syndrome with the appropriate ICND 9 Code, on the proper form and fax it to the proper office, so I can get my MRI done on my leg to figure out how much of it actually affected by the RSD, the pain is no longer localized to the knee to toe that I was first diagnosed with...OH no!

Let us stall, and wait "no more lumbar blocks for you", for the First one, my Pain Management (PM) Specialist was on the phone screaming and threatening to report them to someone somewhere for something bad...I'm not sure, but she got the first one to be approved. When it didn't take, when it didn't do what she wanted it to, she came up with a new plan of attack. We were going at it more aggressively to confuse my system, to allow my central nervous system (CNS) to remind my brain what it was like to be pain free, we were going to double tap it (two days of lumbar blocks back to back) and wait a week and double tap it again... so while we wait for the first one to happen, while we wait for the next round to occur the pain is spreading up my thigh into my lower back, and the pain knows no end. I haven't seen my PM in month, I'm living on Neurontin, Amitriptyline, and Tramadol. And while I don't want to get into my "drug habit" so to speak, you must understand, because it speaks volumes of how the body adapts to the medications and they no longer become effective.

The Neurontin makes me what I've come to affectionately call a "Loop Head", my Amitriptyline reads "Take 1 or 2 Tablets at bedtime as needed for Insomnia/Pain" at first one would be enough to knock me out, and I was finally able to sleep. Unfortunately, 1 would not be enough into the second week of pain and not being to sleep without it, and believe me I tried, so I went up to the authorized 2 but it stopped working too, and so I'd take some Tramadol and try to go back to sleep. Now, it's sad to say but neither the Tramadol or the Amitriptyline help with the insomnia or the pain.

I'm not a drug seeker, let's get that straight away, I have three boys, and do not want to spend my days high on narcotics so I miss their daily lives. I only take my medications at bedtime, to sleep, because I need it to function as a parent. So know I'm juggling pain, a pain greater then child birth, with no assistance, and no cure in sight, trying to be the best mom that I can be, and my one glimmer of hope that I have, that I'm trying to hold on to is being bogged down by red tape, and I'm getting the "Unwelcomed" spreading of this monster up into my back!