Nerve block

[yardtick]

I was wondering how long does a nerve block last.   A month ago I had three injections along the scar neuroma.  Guess what.......its like I never had the nerve block.  I'm seeing the Dr on Thurs, so I'm wondering if he will do the procedure all over again.  It wasn't pleasant but I did have relief for a few weeks.

Anne Marie

[Jim Scott]

Anne Marie:

In my admittedly limited medical knowledge, nerve blocks can have varying timeframes for efficacy, depending on what kind of anesthetic is used.  Two to six months is often the range.  Less than a month seems unusual, but it may not be, in your case.  I would certainly bring this up with your doctor and perhaps he'll give you another injection - or explain why the one you received was so short-term.

Jim

[Janet]

You can treat the pain or fix the problem.  As far as I know, the only fix for a scar neuroma is surgery by someone qualilfied to work on peripheral nerves.
I spent 3 years trying to treat the pain and the root cause was still there.  I spent a few hours in outpatient surgery and had the problem permanently fixed.  I could have saved myself a lot of pain, if I had figured this out sooner. Dr Ducic, at Georgetown University was the first doctor that zeroed in on the problem and knew how to fix it. The scar neuroma was fixed 100%.  No pain on my AN side.

I also had pain coming from my occipital nerve on the opposite side of my AN surgery. This was not a scar neuroma. It was a blood vessel irritating the nerve. He fixed this too.  (I get some twinges of pain but nothing like it was and Tylenol takes care of it.)

Janet

[yardtick]

Hi Janet,

That's exactly what my Dr said yesterday!  He did give me another nerve block and when I go back the end of July we are booking the surgery.  I'm hurting today, I didn't sleep well last night but I will nap this afternoon....I hope.  You know it takes a couple of days for the area to settle down. 

How long did the surgery take and how long was the recovery?  I'm off at the moment from work on short term disability, long term will kick in before the surgery.  I'm just curious because I've used all of my sick days and vacation days, I want to make sure I'm feeling really good before I think about going back to work.

Anne Marie

[Janet]

My surgery was done out-patient under general anesthetic and it took about 2.5 hours.  I had a bilateral release of the greater occcipital nerves and my old AN scar revised where the scar neuroma was. A single scar revision shouldn't take as long. He took a fat graft from my hip to pad the AN surgical site. The recovery was fairly quick. Back to normal activities in a coulple of days, but no lifting. What type of surgeon are you going to?

Janet