I rang the GP on Monday to talk about the next step with my meds change. I said about the outcome of my visit to Queen Square and that I need to be referred to the pain team. She said again that they won’t accept a referral whilst I’m still undergoing active treatment at the hospital, so I explained again that I am not undergoing “active” treatment, because that treatment is high risk and less invasive options need to be explored first. To be honest I was starting to lose my rag with her by this time.
We then moved on to talk about my change of meds. She has taken me off of gabapentin completely and I am on an increasing dose of pregabalin over an 8 day period. I then need to have a week at the increased dose and then talk to her again to see how things are. Hopefully by then she will have had the letter from Queen Square, will know if pregabalin is proving any better, and she said she could consider talking to the pain consultant to see if they would consider a referral if she was to make one.
4 days on from starting to increase the pregabalin, I do feel I’m seeing some benefit. The nerve problem in my foot as eased, and I haven’t been getting as much of the acute stabbing pain in my right shoulder blade. However, the chronic pain around my thoracic spine is more prominent. I guess that could be because the reduced acute pain isn’t distracting me from the chronic pain now. Unfortunately I’ve been more wobbly, resulting in a fall on Tuesday evening, a couple of times of just stopping myself from falling, and with yesterday being particularly bad – I was stumbling all over the place most of the day. That’s something else to think about in terms of what the pain team might be able to do. The registrar made the point that the pain team might be able to help with the chronic and acute pain around my spine, and with the neuropathic pain in my leg, but surgery is the only thing that might help with the balance problem.
I have asked Queen Square for my images to be sent to Mr Sepahi so that he can review them. My feeling now is that, when I get to have another review in 6 months, that may as well be back in Southampton. Mr Casey has already said he doesn’t believe he can do anything different or better than Mr Sepahi, and Mr Sepahi has confirmed that we can provide all the same surgical facilities (neurological monitoring etc during surgery) that QS offer. Once I have a copy of the letter from QS, I will forward it to Mr Sepahi, hopefully with an update about the pain clinic. Perhaps if the GP continues to refuse to refer me, Mr Sepahi will instead.