It happened to Sharon Ewing during a tennis match. Snap! A herniated disk.

Sharon Ewing: "This was the kind of unrelenting 24 hour a day pain that was keeping me from basically doing any of my activities."

Sharon went to the Medical College of Pennsylvania for an out-patient procedure known as arthroscopic microdiscetomy. Here's how it works: a tiny incision is made in the patient's back and an arthroscope is inserted, which provides a clear view of the area on a TV screen. Doctors then remove the disk fragments.

Parviz Kambin, M.D., Chief Spine Surgeon, Medical College of Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, PA:

"We put a tube in the disk. The tube has a blunt end. It just separates the muscles and when you're finished you take the tube out and the muscles fall back together."

Sharon Ewing:
"The pain was reduced by about 90 percent within hours of the surgery."

The advantages of this procedure over traditional spinal surgery are that it avoids entering the spinal canal, there is little bleeding, and nothing is severed or cut.

If you would like more information, please contact:

Medical College of Pennsylvania Hospital
3300 Henry Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19129
(610) 889-3080

Volunteers

A special thank you to all our CPS group volunteers. In January we had three new chat moderators volunteer and receive training. Their help has been really needed with the group growing so rapidly. Please join me in thanking and congratulating these wonderful volunteers for their time. The new chat moderators are:

DonnaM3
Tedebear1
Swanky1

If there is something you would like to volunteer to do, (a poem for the news letter, research for news articles, or to host a new chat room for the group) please let me know via my e-mail.

The CPS Group has received several awards this month. Below are three of my favorite. You can view the rest of the awards on the "awards page".

Presented to the Chronic Pain Support Group Web Site by: Fortune City
~~ This is our first award. Very grateful to FC for this award. ~~

Received 01/21/1999, from the Spinal Cord Injury / Dysfunction Station.
I'm so proud of this award from such a great group!

---

Received 1/16/1998. This award is very special
as it recognizes the CPS Group and the work being done here.

Congratulations on making this one of the most rapidly growing forums on Delphi. We are holding the 5th place in the hot forums listing in the "Support & Recovery" category of Delphi Forums. There are approximately 180 forums in this category. So this is quite an accomplishment considering our group was started on December 8, 1998. These rankings change daily, but we've been at the 5th place level for about two weeks.

Thank you to everyone for being so supportive. You make the Chronic Pain Support Group such a wonderful place and you are the ones who draw new members into the group with your compassion, your laughter, and your empathy.

Rich's struggle with pain began in 1990 when he ruptured 2 discs in his lower back while on the job. After a long fight with workman's compensation and blinding pain, Rich was allowed to have corrective surgery. This went well and he returned to work in 6 weeks. Rich continued to have trouble sitting and riding so the workman's compensation sent Rich to a for a mylogram. This showed that scar tissue had filled in the space where the nerves attach to the legs and were strangling the nerves. This condition is known as Arachnoiditis.

The pain Rich experienced that had hovered at a 3 or 4 in 1991 rocketed to a near constant 9 for a good part of the past year. Like many chronic pain patients, he's made the trip through the pain medication forest and now is using oral morphine along with nerintin and anti-depressants. Rich has also tried a spinal stimulator in 1998 however it did not lower the pain enough to go through the process of having a permanent implant. The failure of the spinal stimulator was a big emotional set back for Rich.

Coping with pain has been a struggle this last year for Rich. He states that the head pain is as real as the body pain. However, Rich has found therapy helps with the mind pain. To help his pain level (both physical and mental) Rich has learned relaxation, meditation, and denial. All three help to get the mind into a different state were the pain is diminished slightly. Rich states "The best thing I've done though is talk to all you people. Pray. and Prescriptions."