Facet Denervation

As most of you know I have suffered with back pain for a long time and over the past years it has gotten where I can't stand or walk very far without severe pain. I have been on a pain management program, tried cortisone shots and still had extreme back pain, so the doctor decided the next step was to see if a facet denervation would help give me some relief. Facet denervation is where they sever the facet nerve, which will give you pain relief for about 9 - 12 months before it regenerates itself. In order to determine if I was a candidate on August 10th they did a medial branch block on the facet nerve to see if that eased the pain. For 24 hours I had to monitor my pain on an hourly basic and if I had pain relief then I would qualify for the surgery. Fortunately for me I did have pain relief, faxed my 24 hour pain diary to the doctor and he contacted me and we scheduled the surgery for August 27th.

Well yesterday I show up at the hospital, get in my cute little hospital gown, get my IV put in and the doctor comes in to discuss the procedure before I go into the surgery room. I mentioned to the doctor how much better I have felt since the medial branch block on the 10th and the doctor (who reminds me of Doogie Howser because he is so young looking) said well if you were my relative I would say lets not do this procedure until the block wears off which could be a week or three months. He went on to say that surgery is invasive, has risk and if you have relief from the block then lets wait until the pain returns before we do the procedure (he also apologized that he had not contacted me to see how my pain was doing since I saw him on August 10th). I have always liked Dr. Giovanellio but I have even more respect for him now - have you ever heard of a doctor sending a patient home when they are ready to be wheeled into the operating room!! To say the least I was very happy and ended up going shopping yesterday instead of having surgery!! I know I will have to have the procedure sooner or later but later is better than sooner - right?!?!?!