Shoreline

Hey Lil, Although LA meds can be used effectively and responsably while your trying to recover from an injury, you are taking a chance at masking pain to the point where surgery won't be an option. Prt of the gateway theory of pain is pain imprinting into nerve tissue, so even when an impinged nerve is released, the pain continues on or can spread into RSD or CRPS, whole body pain from an over stimulated nervous system and the gates in the gateway, instead of opening and closing simply stay open and continue to send the pain signal when the pain source has been removed, This is what causes phantom pain which is just as real as any pain. Might want to do some research and some consulting with surgeons if you have put off needed surgery for several years. Just something to consider

I do underdstand not wanting to go back under the knife, odds decrease with each attempt,They decrease with every level involved, and if the likelyhood of surgery helping is so low it's probably not worth risking coming out worse off than you are now. I have had 3 and most surgeons either mwon't touch me or want to do Frankenstein surgery. I'm already fused from L1-S1 and that's a huge failure, I've broken 2 sets of hardware and there isn't a quick surgical fix, I'm afraid to give it another go. The last surgery was 11 hours and the one guy that wants to hack away wants to extend it up to T10 and take ribs from both sides. My hips are used upand most surgens have toldme that 3 have failed, what makes you think a 4th and more invasive would help at all. Then PM is really the only option and you already may be at that point of pain imprinting regardless of what you do.
Read this artcle about acute pain becoming chronic and all the changes that occur.
Good luck, Dave
http://www.hosppract.com/issues/2000/07/brook.htm