Pain Management and Recovery Journey

All of a sudden this pain, like all, all down

like his right side, um,

aching. He was up night in excruciating pain.

I would...

I got to the point I couldn't go out sit with him all the time just because, you go

outside because he was in so much pain. He, he was just...

Had to, had to get up and go and

just cry. He's in so much pain. It was terrible.

One morning we were looking at his leg, and I'm going, "You've got

a big dent in your leg." Um, his four

muscle sets, the... Is it the,

uh, tibialis arterial

muscle? I believe it is. That's the one that dies.

Um,

and it actually each day it was nearly actually getting bigger,

like it was like it

was disappearing. It was just the bone.

You could see,

uh, where muscle was, then there'd be a drop,

and then you'd see,

well, only bone, and then you'd see a bit more muscle

again.

And he was on enough drugs that they refused to give him any more,

um,

because he would've OD'd. Um,

but it still wasn't even getting him on top of barely any of the

pain for him. Maybe taking the edge off, but that was it.

I just basically put it all over his leg, and

within five minutes he goes, "Jo, half the pain's gone."

And I went, "What? Really?" And he said, "Yeah." He said, "Half the pain's

gone." Um,

probably maybe about 20 minutes later it sort of came back.

So we just kept applying it because it's the,

the most relief he had had in

months at that point. One of Brisbane's top neurosurgeons,

and he

actually looked at Brent and he said, "Sorry, mate," but like in total

straight up, "Your muscle's, your muscle's gone. Your muscle's dead.

Um,

so there's not much I can do for you." And it's grown his muscle

back. Amazing enough it grew back enough

that the surgeon could actually find where

the problem was,

dislodge it, do a bit of nerve tidying up, um, where, where some of

it was obviously very, very compressed.

Um, and he had to do a bit of microsurgery

and stuff like that on it.

But now the blood flow's getting back to the muscle and it's okay.

And out of all the drop foot people that I actually do see around,

because we talk

to them, um, he's by far the best walker

and doesn't have to wear... 'Cause we spent like $2,000 nearly on a

particular

orthotic foot brace thing for him and all sorts of stuff.

And now he just wears his thongs. The pain relief that it gave my

husband in those first like about first six to eight weeks,

it was just nothing was... As I said, they had him on every

painkiller they could. But the DMSO, it l- it

lasted the longest. Um, and the pain relief,

he was actually having nights where he wasn't, just wasn't outside on

balcony in agony.