So - how’s the back pain?

I have so far resisted posting anything about back pain, even though I know that when I was a pre-opper myself it was one of my biggest concerns when reading other people’s blogs. As someone who has suffered from constant daily back pain for more years than I care to remember, I really hoped that this operation would help. My consultants view on all this is somewhat different – at the clinic I was told (repeatedly) before the operation that they only wanted two outcomes – one – to get my head over my middle and - two – to stop the progression of my curve. Whenever I mentioned the pain, I was told that that was not the purpose of the operation and that any improvement in pain was to be treated as a bonus (even though they actually use pain as one of the indicators in whether to operate or not!).

Well, here I am 9 weeks on and they have achieved their goals – but have I had my bonus? Well, I know that you are all desperate to know, but it really is still too early to tell. I know that the crunched up pain in my right side has gone, but I still have the pain up by my left shoulder blade (probably because they didn’t do my top curve yet). The pain in my lower back, well, I just can’t tell – I don’t have my old pain, but I have a different type of pain in a similar place and that’s in addition to the pain in my side where my rib used to be. Of course if I was a pessimistic person, I might be saying that I have swapped one pain for another but since I am optimistic, I just think that I still have post-operative pain. All this means that I can’t tell you anything concrete yet – sorry!