4 years of having a disc prolapse

hi all,been reading all the stories on this site so thought i would join and tell my story. It all started 4 years go on hols in Portugal,it was day 2 of my hols and decided to do a bomb in the pool,well turned out not to be a good idea, as when i got out i had severe muscle spasm, not knowing what was up i went through 2 weeks in a lot of pain and sleeping on the floor. When i got home every thing seemed to be ok, so left it at that thinking must of pulled something, it was almost a year went by with nothing, then out of the blue it happened again, so went to gp and was told sciatica, given some pain killers and that was that, again another year went by and happened again ,but in the mean time had read a lot on the net, so this time went to docs lifted my t shirt and said does this look like sciatica he said no, so sent me to peterborough for a MRI through the wonderful choose and book system, week later went back and it showed i had ddd but didn't need surgical intervention, so back to square 1 again. since then had a few episodes of muscle spasm and gone out of shape a few times, given the usual diazepam and normal pain killers. Then in October last year went again big time and was of work for 6 months in this time had gone into spasm at least ten times and lost my job, since October i had had about enough of it and went to my docs and had a right go feeling that i had been let down by the system, so he sent me to a pain management clinic and he said straight away that i needed a recent mri scan ,so he got me 1 a week later and an appointment to see a consultant, well when i went to see him he said i had 2 prolapse disc 1 real bad and the other not so bad and said to go swimming which would help, but he also said not to work bend or twist as it could be dangerous ,so i left taking his advice, only 2 weeks later got of the sofa and my disc had popped out, really didn't know what pain was till then. My wife got me to a & e where they gave me gas and air which did nothing and sent me home, great! had to crawl on my hands and knees to get back into the house, went up a second time a few days later to the a & e and this time a doctor called my consultant and arranged for me to go see him the next day. He decided to book me in for 2 weeks time to have a couple of injections of cortisone into my facet joints and a nerve block. Oh my god, this just aggrevated it and 2 weeks later ended up going to a & e again 20th oct 08 in an ambulance doped up on morphine! Sent home few hours later yet again. Wife rang consultants secretary next day and managed after a few strong words to get me in that afternoon. So consultant finally saw me at my worst he couldnt believe what he saw and how badly out of shape i was. In fact his exact words were Oh my god! he even took pictures of me. But the outcome finally is that i am having an urgent microdiscectomy and decompression within the next month (so they say unless i get cancelled as the NHS are so wonderful at doing that! I am hoping this will at last give me some relief from all the pain and discomfort i feel on a daily basis. At the moment i am on diazepam, amitryptiline, co-codamol 8/500, tramadol and after my wife spoke to my gp i finally got something that works, Temgesic, its strong but at least it gives me a bit of relief from the pain. Sorry if this is very long but i hav a long story to tell due to the choose and book system being so ineficient! I feel i have been let down by the nhs as if they had taken action a couple of years ago i would not have had to go through all this over last couple of years. So all those suffering and thinking there is no end, there is you just have to be very forceful. Just hoping my op works now. All the best. Tim

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