Thursday, July 30, 2009

Stephanie's Neck

Well for those of you that don't know I have been having quite an issue with my next ever since Maks was born. I have been experiancing neck pain and headaches ever since he was born. As we got farther out from the birth the headaches started to get worse. I finally gave in and called my Dr. after a few days of no relief. She told me to go ahead and just rest for a few days and continue to take my medicine.
After 2.5 weeks I was still in pain. I called back in and decided I needed to go to the ER to be checked out by an anestesiaologist on Monday (7-27) due to having severe headaches and neck pain. When I arrived to the ER they decided to do lab work, CAT Scan, x-rays, and a spinal tap. These were done to check for infections or other noticable problems. The results for all the tests came back negative. However after having the spinal tap done I was in an extreme amount of pain. The Dr. decided that I needed to have a blood patch done to help cause the headahces to go away. The ER doc decided that there was a leak in my spinal column that was causing me to have spinal headaches, therefore, when they did the spinal tap and took out more fluid the headaches got worse. After the blood patch was complete (the process to get a blood patch is to take blood from my arm and inject it into my spine to cause the blood to clot in the hole, this helps to stop the leak) I had immediate relief. I was able to go home on Tuesday morning. The headaches and neck pain were gone until Wednesday morning. On Wednesday I started to have the headaches again. After waiting all afternoon to get back into my primary care Dr. I was finally able to see the Dr. and he decided that I needed to get a second blood patch. After getting the second blood patch I have experianced no more headaches. My lower back is still a little bit sore and there is still some neck discomfort but it is not near the pain I was in before. Hopefully in the next few days all the pain will go away and I can get back to normal!!

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Dreiling Family Slide Show! Compiled December 2010