I Have No Hooray For HIPA!

I am eternally grateful the young Doctor I'm going to for pain has a good sense of humor. Through this five year process of trying to find the cause of and eventually cure the pain in my hip and buttocks has found me with a very short fuse.

Three more shots yesterday in specific spots marked by pen where it really hurts when pressed. That was more uncomfortable then the shots themselves! However the shots weren't a picnic either.

I told the Doctor I was very tired of being a pin cushion. This is a total of seven; the first four had no effect what-so-ever. Let's see. A brief recap. GP puts me on an Ibuprofen regime. Nothing. Physical therapy. Nothing. Acupuncture. Medicare doesn't pay, but basically nothing. Muscle relaxants. Nothing. Back to Physical therapy morphing to heavy duty massage therapy. Nothing.

I ask about a pain specialist and was told they don't treat cases like me. Live with it. As a consolation and at the urging of the PT I went to an orthopedic surgeon. Hadn't seen anything like it before and there was nothing to do surgery on so pop some pain pills and if I wanted try, a different PT. I did.

PT sent me to chiropractic who sent me for more message therapy of a different sort. Nothing. A back specialist. The first two shots. Nothing.

I changed GPs. "You need a pain specialist after all this." I'd have kissed him if his wife hadn't been in the room! All this has taken five years! Now we're trying to find where exactly the pain is coming from by process of elimination. Then treat it.

Here's part of the problem. HIPA! Because of that confounded privacy act doctors who you've been referred to have to have a release from you to share it with your GP. If you're then sent to another specialist the GP can't forward the records from the previous specialist. You have to request it. They expect seniors to be aware of all this what's more remember, over five years, who did what, when and where? Isn't it in the records? In a word, no.

Fortunately, I've learned to have test results, be it lab work, MRIs or x-rays sent to me. I had a copy of the MRI of my hip and when I realized my doctor hadn't access to it, gave it to him. "It says right here where the inflammation is," says he. We had a rather terse conversation about why the attending specialist didn't suggest it was out of his area but was in someone elses!

"This is where I tried to start five years ago!" Okay, this has gotten long enough. You certainly get the gist of it. I'm just tired. Tired from the onslaught of different medications they keep trying; very tired of hurting.

So yesterday's shots? I know enough to not even be cautiously optimistic. However, as I rose from bed very tentively this morning I felt different. I felt like someone had whacked that hip with a hammer, but it was a different sort of discomfort. When the lidocaine completely wears off who knows. Been there before.

I do know that Hub and I walked with more vigor this morning. I did my stretches and treadmill without the usual discomfort. And could rejoice that at least one of the Killdeer hatchlings made it through yesterday's horrific wind storm because it was out with it's parents when we returned from our walk. Hopefully there are more. I checked and there is an unhatched egg so who knows. Miracles can happen so I'm told.

Perhaps one day it will be my turn.