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[Text: Patient: Felice Dorman Diagnosis: Degenerative Disc Disease
Treatment: C5-C6 Cervical Discectomy Fusion]
My dad was a physician and I watched him when I was growing up how he was able to
touch the people in ways that I felt was very special.
He was -- he felt very privileged to be able help the patients.
He was very calming and he was accommodating.
He was kind. He looked me in the eye.
He treated me like more than a patient. He treated me like someone that he cared about.
I wasn't just another surgical patient to him. I wasn't just another operation he could do.
I was really -- it mattered. He wanted me to be better.
First I met Mrs. Dorman I felt that she was a delightful person,
appropriately anxious with the anticipation that she may need an operation to get her problem fixed.
Being a nurse and having a husband who is a physician, I was scared to death.
A little bit of knowledge is always dangerous.
I did realize that she had been on pain medications for a long time.
She did have a difficult condition. I had pain that went not only in my neck
but it went down my left arm.
My left arm would on and off go numb. I would drop things.
I was talking a lot of prescription pain medication.
I was incredibly, incredibly uncomfortable.
If I didn't take the medication, I got sick.
And I knew that I needed to find, hopefully, something or someone that could
help me out of the bind that I was in,
just feeling miserable and not being able to manage my life and manage my pain.
One of the main reasons why the patients who deserve treatment, who could
potentially benefit from the treatment,
would not get treated is because of the fact that there is nobody at the helm
helping the patient to go through the steps to the point where they could be
identified as potential surgical candidates.
So, the patient may get treated initially by their primary care physician and they
get referred to a neurologist, they get preferred to pain management specialist,
is a complicated of process. And for that reason I think is Hopkins
is the right place to come to because we do have all these individuals here.
We do work closely with our -- on the anesthesia pain management team.
There is a significant psychological component to all of these, as you can
imagine if you're in pain all the time.
There's a component of depression, frustration that needs to be addressed.
And, therefore, with respect to diagnostic studies, we do have people who
specialize in performing discograms, you know, with [inaudible].
Again, pain management team is intimately involved with that.
And then the next step, if it comes to surgery, the surgery is either performed by us.
There's no assurance. Sometimes we team up with orthopedic
colleagues, work together, and, of course, the anesthesia always an integral part of that.
And then we would have both before the operation and after the surgery, our rehab
service intimately involved to put the patient through appropriate physical
therapy program.
And so as you can imagine, for my description so far, we've already gone
through six or seven different specialties already trying to determine what would be
the best solution for the patient.
Having said that, Mrs. Dorman really got lucky and I think that she was one of
those individuals who could benefit from the surgery.
I think we were fortune enough to be able to identify that to through our
multidisciplinary care.
And, eventually, I think we made the right decision for her and that's the
reason why she benefited from the operation at the end.
The minute I woke up from the surgery I felt better.
I knew I was better. Every time I turn my head to drive my car
to look in both directions, there's so many movements that I do that every time
I do them I'm shocked that I don't have any pain at all.
And it's a miracle. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing.
I'm so grateful and I do still expect to have pain, but I don't.
I have no pain.