I Just Had A New Patient Come In

and we were talking about what her issues were and the biggest thing is that she was under the impression that she was going to either need some injections or was going to need a spinal stimulator for the pain that she’s having.

Once she got in, we did a little bit further evaluation and talked about what she has going on. She doesn’t actually have pain, she has numbness and tingling. These are two very different things because pain is going to be more of the sensory where numbness and tingling going to be more motor.

Now, what that means is motor is the one that moves your muscles so it innovates your muscles and gets your muscles to work, where the sensory one is going to be more for the pain. If we talk about injecting something, usually that’s for pain, not for motor, because why would we want to desensitize a motor nerve, which is basically the driving force of telling your muscle to move.

What happens is when you sit in that weird position or you get up and you feel that numbness in your arm, it feels like your foot’s asleep. That was pressure over that motor nerve, and then when it comes back and the pressure goes away, you can function normally. That’s why your foot feels so heavy when you’re trying to move it because the motor nerve itself or basically the power to move that muscle was compromised. It didn’t make sense for her to go get an injection for a motor nerve issue.

I told her what I thought and told her what we wanted to look for. She came in for an exam and as we were looking for these things, we found out what I talked about. There’s actually an issue going on with compression of those motor nerves and certain functions, not a sensory nerve. If she would have went in and gotten a neurotransmitter put in that was going to send signals to turn off the sensory, she would’ve noticed no change.

The problem is still there compressing the motor nerves, and her biggest issue is not only she having numbness and tingling, but she’s having weakness. She’s having weakness walking. Her gait is totally gone. That’s not going to be helped by getting this neurotransmitter. The only reason her doctors mentioned a neurotransmitter was because they didn’t know what else to do because they don’t treat these kinds of things.

They said, we’ll get you on some pain medication or we’ll give you this down the road. That’s not what she needed because her issue wasn’t with those specific nerve fibers. That’s why it’s so important that you make sure that you not only can get a second opinion in this case but make sure you go to the right kind of doctor that specializes in these issues.

In this case, she could have potentially gone down that path, had surgery done for the wrong issue, and she would have noticed no improvement whatsoever. By that time, the issue has gotten even worse and we’re dealing with a bigger issue.