Obama was elected and I was in horrible pain.
It was frightening. I felt pain on my right side and a heaviness to that same side. For a long couple of days I brushed my fear aside and thought that it might be related to my gallbladder surgery. I had the biggest, ugliest and diseased gallbladder than my surgeon had seen in many a year. Funny thing: I had no typical symptoms. Until it was ready to burst. I woke up with a pain boring through me like it was being made by a hole saw. The gallbladder came out and the pain faded -- for a couple of months.
Now it was back. I went to the surgeon, and he disowned it. I went to my doctor, who had missed the huge budging thing in my gut several times, and he chalked it up to either post surgery pain that a small percentage of gallbladder victims get, or that it was in my head.
This not knowing started me on a rocket trajectory of anxiety and depression. I litereally "lost it". Nobody could tell me what was wrong with me, and the medical establishment put me on drugs for depression and anxiety. Once I recognized that the pain was in my head it would "go away", so said the shrink I was seeing.
I forced myself to think the pain was not real. It got worse.
Finally I went to a neuro doctor. He asked me if I could pee and poop without it dribbling down my legs, and I said I was fine. Then he asked me if I could walk. Well, I had walked into his office under my own power, and quite well.
It's just that my side ached, and I was beginning to get symptoms of what I now know to be anxiety. There are hundreds of anxiety symptoms. The neuro doctor ran an open safety pin across the mid-section of my abdomen. My skin jumped. This was a "ah-ha" moment for that doctor. I had a thoracic disc protrusion. He was sure of it. It's very rare, and I was the first guy he saw with it. Great, I thought. A couple of weeks later I got an MRI that proved I was a medical freak.
Then the panic set it. I was one slip or sneeze away from being paralyzed.
I stopped moving and bending and doing any lifting of anything.
A friend recommended a chiropractor. I went, not even knowing what type of doctor he was. I had never been to a chiropractor. He told me I was a rare duck and was 62% disabled.
DISABLED!
How could I be disabled? A couple of weeks before, after my surgery, I was out jogging and pain free. Now I was one for the books and ready for a wheel chair at the best and being totally flat on my back at the worst. This chiropractor told me I would never recover full use of some of my muscles. Add that to the story and images the neuro doctor showed me about a relative who was unable to walk until he got back surgery.
Meanwhile my right side ached. The pain wrapped around to my back.
I was more than scared. I sought out the opinion of the head neuro-surgeon at Rush Hospital in Chicago. He came back and said that I was not a candidate for an operation, and even if he did, it was no guarantee that my pain would end. I took my MRI with its left disc protrusion hanging out and gripped my right side and left.
I faithfully did the exercises prescribed to me by the chiropractor and by very good physical therapist named Art. After awhile Art began to wonder about my symptoms. The disc protrusion was to the left; the symptoms to the right.
Was this referred pain from my spine? If so, how?
I saw other doctors; they told me they could not help me.
Meanwhile the pain on my right side had now taken over my entire abdomen. My chest hurt in my sternum area, and I couldn't even look downward or left or right.
I was in severe pain. The only relief I got was at night. After the burning from the nerves calmed down I was able to sleep well. The next morning I would feel almost normal, but once I got up and started moving there was the aciness an the horrible pressure I felt wrapping around my right side.
I went to a holistic doctor who did acupuncture. This seemed to help with the back spasms. Still, the muscles in my back made my spine feel like it was twisted into a sharp "S" or "Z".
Then I went back to the idea that maybe it was my mind that was causing all this. I was under so much stress when this started. I read the "Mind Body Prescription" by John Sarno, MD, and also his other book, "Healing Back Pain".
This caused me to review my MRI, which essentially just showed a disc protrusion and nothing else. The disc was not bumping the spinal column and it was an other-wise normal spine. I had to come to that conclusion.
With that in mind I started to jog again and lift weights and ride my bike. I lifted what I wanted.
Yet my side ached. And ached. But not as bad as it had six months prior.
Okay, then. I had "cured" myself of a back pain that wasn't. My interior organs were all fine. I had full range in my back, bending, etc.
Several weeks ago I put a TENS machine on my scar areas, just for the hell of it. I didn't believe the TENS machine, which emits an electical pulse, would do any good, but I thought it might feel good in a massage sort of way.
I get up after 40 minutes and look n the mirror. An angry nerve is branching ut of the scar area and wrapping around my back. It fits perfectly with the thoractic disc at level T-8.
THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEM HAS ALWAYS BEEN.
This further confirmed my suspicion that the pain was not being referred from my back but from the other way around.
Over the two years I've been suffering with this I had seen many forum pages of people with right-sided pain. Some had gallbladders and some did not. No test was ever conclusive as to the cause.
Then I came across an article that I had bookmarked at the very beginning but had forgotten about. The article had to do with Abdominal Cutaneous Nerve Entrapment Syndrome (ACNES). Apparently, it is an often overlooked cause of abdominal pain. It happens when the intercoastal nerves in the thoracic region don't make the turn correctly back to a base under the cutaneiou skin layers. Or if there is stress on those nerves from scars causing traction on the nerves either at the surface of the skin or below. It's not the same as a nerve being "cut" or "damaged totally", but rather being forced into unnatural positioning by tension on the rectus muscle, specifically the lateral edge where it is most vulnerable.
So while my pain continues I at least think I have an explanation, and perhaps there is something to be done about it.
What's Obama got to do with it? I hated the idea that my health was sinking and that this man was going to do his best to change health care as we know it.