I met with Dr. CGL today, and we agreed that we will go ahead with the SI fusion surgery. He put in the paperwork on Monday (October 1)! Here's what he officially said:
Susan returns today to discuss the sacroiliac joint injections which provided dramatic near complete transient relief. She has contemplated the potential surgical intervention for this presumed sacroiliac joint pain at length with her husband. We discussed again today the rationale for surgery, the workup process, and the outcome likelihoods. We also discussed the technical aspects of the surgery as well as the recovery. Given these discussions, she would like to move forward with surgery. This would be via right sacroiliac joint fusion using SI bone. Risks, benefits, alternatives and limitations were discussed at length with the patient, including but not limited to death, stroke, blindness, heart attack, DVT/PE, nerve injury, paralysis, bleeding, infection, cerebrospinal fluid leakage, bowel injury, epidural fibrosis, the need for additional or future surgery, persistent or worsening pain, and complex regional pain syndrome, and all questions were answered. The patient wishes to proceed with the plan.Face to face time was approximately 20-25 minutes, greater than 50% of which was spent in imaging review with the patient and/or counseling regarding surgery/risks/recovery.He said recovery would be 3 - 6 weeks partial weight bearing, which is better than I originally thought. We'll start with the right side (they do each side separately... since it is hard to have partial weight bearing recovery on both sides...) and then decide if we want to move forward with the left.
Yea! One step closer to real pain reduction!
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