female pudendal pain

[Hannahbear]

I woke up one morning in April 2012 with a terrible burning in my female area. After about 15 different doctors, several tests and even a hysterectomy a found a pelvic pain specialist that said I have Pudendal neuralgia. I see a pelvic floor physical therapist 1 time a week. I am not a "common case", I do not have worse symptoms from sitting. I have a constant burning from my rectum to my belly button and everything in between. This includes my vaginal area and clitoris. I have not had intercourse since this started. I take gabapentin 900 mg a day and baclofen 60 mg a day. The gabapentin really helps. I have had 2 nerve blocks one ultrasound guided from the bottom of my butt area and one CT guided from the top of the butt area. The ultrasound one helped reduce my pain for a few months, the CT guided one made me worse I could not sit without pain in my right butt cheek area for about 2 months then it went away. Recently I found out I have a bulging disc. in my L5, S1 that is giving me pain down my right leg. I decided to go for spinal decompression on the VAX D, and had 1 treatment on 11-22-13. I noticed during the treatment that I started having a bit of burning in my tailbone area. As of this morning 11-24-13 I have noticed burning in my tailbone and lower back area that gets worse when I sit directly on my tail bone area. I am really scared that I may have caused some additional damage. My husband thinks Its just aggravated and that I should keep going. (he had spinal decompression on herniated disc's 6 years ago and it helped him) I am supposed to go for another treatment tomorrow, I am going to cancel until I talk to my pelvic pain specialist. Has anyone else had anything similar as far as pain or the spinal decompression? I just found this site, I will read through posts but thought this might be faster. Thank You so much for any help.

[Violet M]

Hello Hannah,

Welcome to this forum. Haven't heard of this treatment before but there is an interesting article on it on WebMD which you may have already read.
http://www.webmd.com/back-pain/features ... ut-surgery

Sounds like the important thing is to let go if you start experiencing pain during the treatment. It sounds a little brutal and I can understand why you might be nervous about having another treatment given your reaction to the first one. I think you are smart to check with your physician first.

Best wishes -- I hope all goes well for you.

Violet

[Hannahbear]

Violet,
Thank you for the reply. I also know the decompression VAX D machine works because my husband had it done on a herniated disc seven years ago. He also had back surgery when he was 18, and did not want to go through that again. When he hurt his back so bad and heard of this treatment he decided to try it. after the six treatment he was doing better but went for the full course, and has had no problems. I see my pelvic floor physical therapist today, she is in Dr. Hibner's office. Reading through a lot of these posts I see there's quite a few people that have problems with their L5 S-1 disc I know they say that's not where the pudendal nerve runs but it's kind of curious.

Thanks again

[Violet M]

There can be variations in anatomy so it's certainly worth ruling out the herniated disc diagnosis as the cause of your pain.

Who is the PT you are seeing? When they do a pelvic exam is there pain or tenderness along the course of the pudendal nerve when they press on it?

Violet