After my mom's endless nagging (And of course, her offer to pay for the consultation fees), I decided to seek a second opinion from a doctor in private practice. Mom's friend recommended Singapore Pain Care Centre @ Paragon and I quickly fixed up an appointment.
Headed there after my physiotherapy at NUH (Was pretty good and the pain went away for say, an hour?). The wait was pretty quick (duh...) and the doctor, Dr Lee, was really nice and patient. Well, a piece of good news at last. Turns out that the Degenerative Disc Disease (DDD) was actually an accidental discovery. Which means, the pain I've been experiencing was not actually caused by the changes in my spinal disc. It was in fact due to another condition, Myofascial Pain Syndrome, (MPS). Apparently, the consultant at NUH has conveniently attributed the pain to DDD since it was reflected in the MRI. In actual fact, the pain had nothing to do with DDD and it's simply an inflammed muscle/ soft tissues possibly from an accident (I'm thinking of the leg spraining incident in April and it all adds up! Especially since I've been experiencing pain from then!). Nice~
Another encouraging fact: instead of just telling me to take care of my body posture, blah blah, there was actually a treatment option to this condition! (Hooray~) So Dr Lee proceeded to use Localized injectionS to numb the pain and treat the inflammed soft tissues (well, it's my lower right hip to be exact). Hm, interesting fact to note: the injections consist of BOTOX, local anaesthetic and steriods! (Hee.. cool, botox to my ass.. does that make it firmer???)Best of all, he injected so many times that I lost count. (He said seven in total. T_T) Geesh, it was really really painful... =(
Well, the prognosis is really positive. If nothing goes wrong, I should be completely healed within a month, after the injections and a series of physiotherapy sessions. Dr Lee did offer me the option of either doing it at NUH (NO WAY~) or at the clinic. Of course, after all the bad experiences at NUH, I'm definitely not going back! So, he lined up a series of 5 sessions over the next 3 weeks! Can't wait to be pain free!!!
Of course, while I am really glad to finally have answers and most importantly, solutions, my pocket surely isn't. The consultation today comes up to about $450 and the 5 physio sessions will add up to almost $1k. Seriously, thank god for insurance!!!
On a separate note, I find myself losing confidence in doctors. I don't really know who to believe anymore. On one hand, I'm choosing to believe what Dr Lee has told me. Maybe it's because, he offered me a solution, not just a diagnosis. On the other hand, the consultant at NUH only offered me a diagnosis and left me helpless after that. Thus, I do not want to believe him. (Geesh, it's called self-deception ba...)
It's scary how doctors have such varying diagnosis and I really don't know who to believe. I honestly don't know who is right or wrong but for now, I'm definitely placing my hopes on a complete recovery!
Wish me luck!
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