What is this?
This is just a personal case study written by a layperson. It is my own story of chronic pain. The purpose at this point is to organize my thoughts, for myself, and anyone interested.
Who am I?
Hi, my name is Greg Payne. I’m 65 years old and I’ve been in hell for 15 years. Until the age of 50 I was an extreme sports athlete. I lived to windsurf and I also enjoyed downhill mountain biking, snowboarding, surfing, paddleboarding, you get the idea. I did one of these things pretty much daily and I crashed a lot. So I was accustomed to living in pain. Or so I thought. However that pain was nothing like the pain that would begin at the age of 50.
15 Years In Hell
It started as a pressure in my mid-back just left of T10/11, that would rapidly turn to severe stabbing pain that radiated to my left flank. Sometimes it felt like the knife went all the through to the left side of my bifid xiphoid process. It was aggravated by movement and diet. It’s pretty much constant. It ranges from levels 5 to 10 daily. It hovers around 7 most of the time. I’ll be talking about pain syndromes but when you’re averaging level 7 pain chronically, your life has been stolen. The people around you can’t see it. The doctors can’t see it. You can try to tell them that you are in severe pain but anyone you tell hears this all day long (either from other patients or from you) and it’s very difficult to tell them you are in so much pain you want to die. I.E. it’s difficult to communicate that you are in agony. I had a coffee addiction and started making my own espresso and that would eventually cause me to lose 40 lbs because I couldn’t eat. However it was physical activity that really set things off. I suspect my windsurfing waist harness which put hundreds of pounds of pressure on my lower ribs. There is a delayed component that makes diagnosis especially difficult. I don’t feel the pain from activity or palpation until hours later. In fact, the worst pain doesn’t occur until the next day and two days after. Over the years this has gotten worse. A light massage will now put me in Level 9 pain for a week but that pain won’t start until the next day.
I’ve been trying to figure this thing out for 15 years. My brain is fried and I am running out of things to try. Simply put, I am in so much pain, I’m not sure I can live with it much longer. I can’t think or talk about anything else. It has cost me everything in life. I believe there comes a point in some lives that they aren’t worth living. Everyone understands putting an animal out of its misery when it’s been run over and is clearly dying. However human euthanasia is not so easily accepted. Probably one more problem created by religion. Unfortunately our society is now combining it’s unwillingness to euthanize humans with an unwillingness to provide pain medication. Opiates are often the only effective treatment for pain (methadone is the ONLY thing I’ve found that’s effective) but pain patients are made to suffer because of the War on Drugs which they have nothing to do with. So what’s the official solution? Let the patient commit suicide. Oops, I’m starting to rant. I’ll try to minimize that but I will be sharing my frustration at times.
Three Core Surgeries
I just had my third and worst surgery on my left thoracic region, 3 1/2 months ago. I had my first surgery in 2003 to repair a rectus abdominis hernia, another in 2016 to repair damage from the same hernia which probably recurred in 2003. (note my current pain began between these two surgeries). My third and recent surgery was a Costal Margin Reconstruction with the Hansen 3.0 technique, performed by Dr. Hansen himself. Recovery has been difficult. I have been pretty much bedridden so that I don’t break the bioabsorbable plate that was used to plate my 10th floating rib to my slipped 9th and stable 8th ribs. I can’t say for sure yet but I’m pretty sure this last surgery was a huge mistake and only added to my problems. It certainly has me freaked out because it hasn’t helped my original pain and I’m worried about it affecting how active I can be the rest of my life. Time will tell. In the meantime I need to continue to search for a way to stop this pain.
Two Hernia Surgeries and Other Suspects
I think I popped a hole through my left ab muscle in the early 2000s. It took me a year of more to convince the doctors that I needed surgery. The surgeon was surprised to see a hole through the middle of the muscle and he just stitched it up. I waited the instructed recovery period and moved to the Columbia River Gorge to windsurf. I probably popped those stitches then and my core muscles started to move and reshape. Seven years later, the pain in my mid-back would begin, just a few inches through my body from the hernia. Doctors however, refused to see the connection. Maybe there is no connection but I think there is. There is a concept of pain along a dermatome that can collect at the spine and it’s hard to believe this pain isn’t somehow connected to that hernia.
However there are other suspects..
- GI Issue – alcohol, coffee and spicey foods are aggravators. Could they be the original cause?
- Volleyball Accident – in the early 1990s I overextended my spine back and to the left that hurt for years
- Windsurfing harness – not to mention the number of times I catapulted into the boom with by ribs and spine
What Hurts and Why?
After all these years I still don’t know what hurts. Is it muscle? Is it the costovertebral/costotransverse or facet joints? It seems pretty localized. The knife seems to be at the end of the LT10/11 transverse process making the costotransverse joint the primary suspect.
Why does it hurt? There are a lot of things that make it worse. Stress is probably #1, physical movement #2 (especially when already aggravated, and diet #3. So what can I do to figure it out and while I’m figuring it out? I need to #1 relax, #2 walk and stop obsessing about not being able to get out and do my old sports. #3 Eat healthy and hydrate.
What Now?
I need to keep looking for practitioners (MDs, DOs and others). Finding a good one is like finding a needle in a haystack but I need to keep looking even though they usually just makes things worse and always stress me out. I need to research online. I can’t be that unique. I need to keep my chin up. Stress is my worst enemy and I can do stress like a pro.
In a couple of weeks I’ll be able to start exercising. That’s when I need to resume yoga and start going to the gym. Hopefully I can jog without aggravating it too much. That’s the problem. Whenever I exercise, I hurt for days afterward to the point that I’m back in bed. I might need to settle for walking but even that is an aggravator.
If nothing changes I’ll have to consider additional drastic procedures. The two I’ve tried (the ablation and latest surgery) were nightmares but surely there’s something out there that would help. Maybe I should even consider a spinal chord stimulator. I need to research fibromyalgia to see if I have something similar to that. I’m pretty sure my pain involves inflammation. Maybe I just need to concentrate on keeping inflammation down. You’d think I’d know more after 15 years but I’m back to square one. At least other aspects of my life are going well. I need to be more grateful for that and let go of my old life. I’ve never been happy indoors. I may need to forest bathe by camping and hiking and otherwise let go of the extreme sports that were such a huge part of my life, my addiction really. I have a lot of work to do mentally. I need to meditate more and work on my head.
<< To Be Continued >>