Saw My Back Specialist Today

I saw my back specialist today, and I am exhausted, so this may be short.  But maybe not.  As you may have noticed, I tend to be a bit wordy.

I love my back specialist.  Dr. Eric Mayer at the Cleveland Clinic.  If you need a back specialist, I highly recommend him.  He has a good bedside manner, he’s friendly and kind, and he seems to have a clue what he’s talking about, which is more than I can say about some docs I’ve seen.  I also like the fact that he is willing to explain things to me and doesn’t talk down to me.  I hate it when medical professionals assume lay people aren’t smart enough to understand big words.

I really like the Cleveland Clinic, too, except for the matter of parking there.  But I don’t know what could be done, really, to improve parking at such a big, busy institution.  There’s a Starbucks in the building, though, so I can get a latte after my appointment.  That almost makes up for a really long walk to the parking garage and a $6 fee for parking, don’t you think?

Anyway, my doctor recommends going ahead with the radiofrequency neurotomy procedure, in which they burn the nerve endings in the joints where I’ve been having pain so that those nerves don’t transmit pain signals anymore.  Which sounds pretty icky to me but I guess when you’re in enough pain, you’ll do what you have to do to get relief.  And I am in enough pain that burning my nerve endings sounds like a reasonable thing to do.

After my appointment, on my drive home, I called my partner to tell him what was going on.  I pointed out that he would need to drive me for the procedure, it's not something you can drive yourself  home from.  He says, "Well, try to schedule it on a Monday since that is my day off."  Now, I have explained to him more than once (the last time was just a few weeks ago when I was scheduling the nerve block) that you usually don't get a whole lot of choice about what day you want an appointment for a procedure like this.  It's not like making a dentist appointment when your dentist is probably in the office seeing patients five days a week. 

A procedure like this has to be done in a hospital.  The doctor is not at that  hospital five days a week.  He is in his office a good bit of the time, which is at least several miles away from the hospital, and many specialists work out of more than one office and/or more than one hospital.  So it's usually a matter of the doc doing procedures at this hospital one or two days a week and that's it.  You take one of those days or you don't get it done.  And let me point out that today was Monday and I saw him in his office so I'm going to guess that that means he is not at the hospital several miles away performing procedures on Mondays.  Unless he can teleport back to his office or something.  Which would be cool but sounds unlikely.

I don't know what this means, but at this point I don't even feel guilty about him having to take the day off work.  There is no one else that can take me.  No one.  If he wouldn't or absolutely couldn't do it, I don't know what I would do.  Try to hire a private duty nurse or something?  Not through an agency because they usually aren't allowed to transport patients but just someone I would pay for the day.  That's the only other option I can come up with and I'm not doing that unless it was absolutely necessary and it's not.  My partner isn't going to lose his job or anything taking a day off and it would probably cost me more than what he makes in a day to hire someone to do it, so the loss of his wages for the day is not a big deal to me, either.

So I explained one more time how I don't really get to choose the day and just said "I have to have it done."  It's not optional.  I can't continue to be in this much pain all the time and unable to do so many things for myself.  Usually I feel guilty about inconveniencing people but I just don't feel like there is any choice this time.