old pain clinic story
my chronic pain is called neurophathic pain which means my brain feels pain even if the original source of the pain has long since left. my particular pain is in a particular sensitive part of my body (for blokes) and is very unpleasant.
one way of blocking this type of pain is to give the patient an epidural. sometimes this is enough to trick the brain in to thinking that the pain has ended and once the effect has worn off, the pain magically dissappears.
in order to perform an epidural, you have to put a needle in to the patients spine. there is a little hole which you push the needle in to.
the first time they tried to do this to me they couldn't find the hole and I was in massive pain for the half an hour i was in the theatre as they tried to get the needle in the right place in my spine. it was a really intense and horrible pain which i felt right up my spine and in to my head. weird and not nice. he gave up and i went home !
so the second time they attempted it they had an x-ray machine so they could see where they were going. he still failed to find the right hole, so i never got my epidural in the end (the second attempt was less uncomfortable as they used more local anathetic). however, i did manage to get photos of the x-rays.
not everyone has x-rays of their bottom/spine. if you haven't got a copy of yours you can share mine ... [click for bigger version]
it's probably significant that there were three Bibles in the bedside cabinet that day ...
