This is the transcript from a PBS TV interview with the Dr I'l l be seeing later this month and a woman he treated for the same condition I have. In case you don't know, I was treated for this last year but the doctor was not very experienced and clearly did not "get it all", I'm excited to have the EXPERT work on me!!
I want to share this because the percentages show that possibly someone here either knows someone suffering from this or maybe even you yourself could be dealing with this. It is most common in women who have had more than one pregnancy.
Pelvic Pain
Living with pain is a challenge that many people face. And it's especially hard if your doctors can't figure out what's causing it or how to make it go away. Sad to say, that's been the experience of a lot of women suffering from pelvic pain. Now, a new high-tech approach is finally bringing relief to some. HealthWeek's Nancy Olson explains.
JUDY ORNDORFF: "Put that girth back, I want to use this girth."
NANCY OLSON: Judy Orndorff is saddling up her favorite Arabian. She's finally able to enjoy riding again after years of excruciating pelvic pain.
JUDY ORNDORFF: When you exist with chronic pain, it changes your whole life. I had to take narcotics and try to live and work and be a Mommy.
NANCY OLSON: Judy's pain first started more than ten years ago, and intensified after the birth of her son. She saw specialists; she had operations; she took drugs, but nothing worked.
JUDY ORNDORFF: The last straw was what else can we do? Well, there's nothing else to do but a total hysterectomy.
NANCY OLSON: Frustrated, and unwilling to take such drastic measures, she started her own search on the Internet. And she found what she was looking for.
JUDY ORNDORFF: I started bawling because I got the information I knew was for me. My prayers were answered.
NANCY OLSON: Judy's search led her here to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and to this man, Dr. Anthony Venbrux, who finally had a name for her condition.... pelvic congestion syndrome.
ANTHONY VENBRUX, MD, JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL: Like you see the worst case of varicose veins on the legs, only imagine that tangle of vessels in the pelvis. Most often a woman feels heaviness, fullness, burning, throbbing pain.
NANCY OLSON: Normally, blood from the ovaries is carried back to the heart by veins. Pelvic congestion syndrome occurs when these veins aren't working properly. If the vein's valves malfunction, the blood reverses and pools in the veins around the ovaries and the uterus, causing twisted and swollen varicose veins that are painful.
ANTHONY VENBRUX, MD: Many of the women that I see are depressed, their marriages are in tatters. They're hooked on narcotics, they're desperate for a change, anything.
NANCY OLSON: So, what causes these veins to go haywire? No one knows. But doctors can treat them, that is, once they find them.
Often women like Judy go untreated and undiagnosed because common tools like standard X ray, laparoscopy, and ultrasound can miss the condition.
ANTHONY VENBRUX, MD: She was told there was nothing to be done. No one had addressed this vascular problem.
NANCY OLSON: Dr. Venbrux suspected from Judy's symptoms that it could be a vascular problem. So, he performed a special type of X ray called a venogram. A catheter is inserted into the ovarian vein. A dye is injected through it which enlarges the surrounding veins and helps the doctor see the trouble spots.
Once the twisted, swollen veins are identified on X ray, treatment begins immediately. Dr. Venbrux uses two different procedures to shut down the problem veins. This glue-like substance plugs up smaller veins.
ANTHONY VENBRUX, MD: Under X-ray guidance, we advance this small tube into the veins and we inject a liquid that causes the veins to clot.
NANCY OLSON: And injecting this springlike coil through the tube and releasing it into the vein gets rid of bigger offenders.
ANTHONY VENBRUX, MD: It's as if a surgeon came in, opened the patient and tied off the vein.
NANCY OLSON: The process, done under local anesthesia, takes about two hours. Sometimes patients require more than one procedure because their veins are so large.
ANTHONY VENBRUX, MD: "A lot of those big veins that we were seeing are now gone."
NANCY OLSON: And once they're gone for good, Dr. Venbrux says his patients start feeling better in about a week. As many as eight out of ten women get long-term relief. Relief that's making it possible for Judy to enjoy life pain free.
JUDY ORNDORFF: This is just something that's been eating at me for a long time. I don't want to have to deal with that anymore. If I want to do something, I'm just going to go do it and not have to plan my life around well, is this going to cause me to hurt. I'm going to be a normal person.
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Take care,
Michelle
...the greatest of these is LOVE. (I Cor 13)
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Going to share this in case it could help anyone else with unresolved pelvic pain
