I was looking over my original post of this thread and realized that I listed the problems that were found during my recent occipital surgery, but not what was done about each problem. I hope this answers some of your questions.
My occipital nerves were not cut and not ablated. The nerves run i] outside[/i] the skull, so the surgery is not very invasive. The left occipital nerve was seperated from the blood vessel that was piercing it and more room was created around the nerve to give it space. The right occipital nerve had a congenital split in it with muscle in the center. (Like a road spliting and rejoining itself creating a circle in the middle.) He freed this up from the muscle, so that it became one and room was created for it. The right lesser occipital nerve that had attached itself to the scar was cut and the stumped placed in an area that it wouldn't grow back. A similar procedure was done on the small nerve that was embedded in the titanium plate. There wasn't much tissue covering the original AN surgery scar, so he took a fat graft from my hip and lined the old surgical site with it.
The surgery was done outpatient and took about 3 hours. My insurance covered it. The surgeon, Dr. Ducic, is a plastic surgeon with a specialty in periphral nerve surgery. He has done about 300 of these occipital nerve releases for patients with occipital neuralgia. Many people suffer from this that are not AN patients. He revises other types of scars where the nerves grow into the scar tissue and cause severe pain.
By the way, I am still enjoying my new head. I even had 1/2 glass of beer a couple of days ago with no headache. Any alcohol previously would cause a headache. I have found myself picking things up off the floor more. That was difficult to do without causing my head to react. I am still taking Tylenol for some neck aches and my neck is stiff. I tried doing some neck exercises but got a headache, so I backed off until I heal more. Since I stopped the Indomethacin, my stomach is better and I no longer take daily Prilosec. The Botox for my headaches has long worn off. I am still light sensitive in my left eye.
Janet
