Condolences to you, I can very much sympathise. Unfortunately this is an area in which I have a degree of experience as when I hit the grand old age of 31 my spine also took the decision to fall apart. In my case it started of with a knackered disc to which the advice from various drs was to let it rest and it would sort itself out. Eventually I convinced them to send me for an MRI and after a 3 month wait for the results the consultant called me in to say I needed a discectomy.....urgently and I went under the knife a couple of days later. This initially worked but about 4 months later it fell apart again so I had a second discectomy. This didn’t work
I then went through a similar rigmarole to you from the sounds of it, a couple of goes at steroid injections in to the spine as well as the caudal epidural mentioned above which both made matters worse rather than better. Eventually I was given the option to have a fusion although it was stressed the it was only 40% it would help, 40% chance it would make no difference and 20% that it could make things worse. By this point I was in enough pain to take the chance but I was un/fortunate that I was in the no difference camp (small mercies in hindsight). We’ve now reached the point of this rambling post (eventually I hear you all say
) at this point the NHS said something along the lines of “you’ve tried everything else so we’ll now give you another option”. This “last chance fix” is a spinal cord stimulator which is best described as a cross between a pacemaker for pain and a TENS device wired directly in to your spinal cord. Long and the short of it is I now have a battery/control implant behind my hip that is connected up to a paddle containing electrodes that has been implanted inside my spinal column to directly stimulate the nerves within with the aim of reducing pain and which I can control and recharge with what is basically a remote control
View attachment 22934
I’m not going to claim it 100% effective, in fact at time I’m in enough pain I’m sure it isn’t working until I have to turn it off (if I’m welding or around magnetic fields) but it’s something that might be worth asking about (I’d certainly whole heartedly recommend it). I will say that it’s something that they’ll only try as a last resort due to the cost, I have about £30ks worth of kit in my back now before the cost of fitting (I believe surgeons hourly rates are a bit sharp
). Apologies for the long winded rambling post but I honestly think it might be something worth discussing with your consultant