De-nervation

Yesterday I had a wonderful procedure called de-nervation on my back.

Put very simply and in layman's terms, it involves putting the patient under sedation, identifying the painful joints and nerves under x-ray conditions and then using an electric pulse (laser to you and me) to cauterise the nerve endings, effectively killing them. It takes a couple of weeks to be fully effective and lasts nine to twelve months, sometimes permanently.

I have now suffered with back pain for around three years. It took six months to correctly diagnose a prolapsed disk (after several sessions of fruitless physiotherapy) and since then I have had five different sets of injections - five lots of steroids directly into a) the disk and b) the spinal column and also two sets of facet joint injections. None of them have worked more than medium term and eventually, the pain returns. 

If this doesn't work, the next step is back surgery. They will remove what is left of the damaged disk, and fuse the two vertebrae together. Takes about six weeks to recover, apparently. Not something I want to undergo unless I really have to.

I am very fortunate to have insurance through my employer, and so I have had the treatment I need each time pretty quickly and been treated as a human bring in comfortable surroundings. I'm not knocking the NHS, and in an emergency you couldn't be in better hands (last year my father in law had emergency surgery and two weeks of excellent care in the ITU of Guildford General Hospital before sadly he passed away), but if you need treatment for minor injuries you can wait weeks; someone I know has been told they need physio, but the first appointment they could get was in six weeks time. That's ridiculous - if you need physio, you need it now, not in two months time. And the sheer volume of cases the NHS handles makes it inevitably impersonal. The UK is unique in the world with its high quality of readily available healthcare, but it can be something of a cattle market.

I would have to be very hard up to give up my private health insurance and over the last three years I have certainly had my money's worth. My care has been excellent, quick, appropriate and effective. The consultant gave me time and really seemed to care about what I needed. As my treatment was five years ago when I had my septum in my nose straightened at the Queen Vic private wing in East Grinstead. I have no guilt about using private medical care; my view is that I am freeing up an NHS place for someone else.

I really hope that this procedure is effective and I am not in the small minority (about 10%, I believe) who do not respond to it. But if I am, I will certainly go private again for my surgery with no qualms whatsoever. But lets hope it isn't necessary. It will be nice to have a day without any pain!