Name : Brittany Dyke
E-mail : Brittanylynn114@live.com
Adult: 22 years old
Location: Chandler, Arizona
Area(s) affected: Left Femur
Personal History:
When I was a senior in high school is when I started to notice some minor
pain in my knee and hip of my left leg. It never occurred to me that anything
was wrong because I was fairly active with school and put it off to “over
doing,” but as the years passed the pain got worse. I had x-rays done in 2007
but they had said nothing was wrong. As frustrating as it was to hear that,
there was nothing I could do. So I kept dealing with the pain I was feeling
every day and night. Eventually the pain became over bearing and I again went to
my family doctor, James Harris. He in turn sent me to an orthopedic specialist
Dr. Danton Dungy. It was there that they did another set of x-rays and noticed
something was wrong with my left femur. He told me he was going to send me for
an MRI and CT to help determine diagnosis. I learned that my left femur was
beginning to bow outward and that I had an abnormal growth to my bone on the
inside of my thigh reaching into my knee. After we got the scans back was when I
was diagnosed with Melorheostosis on May 7, 2009. They referred me to the Mayo
Clinic here in Scottsdale where I met with Dr. Beauchamp who ordered a bone scan
to make sure that indeed was the correct diagnosis and to check the rest of my
body for any other signs of this disease. He told me that there was no cure and
that the only treatment that he saw fit was pain management. So for the last 10
months I have been to a few different pain doctors who have had me on more pain
medications than I have ever been on in my life, but as time has still gone on
of course the pain has become extensively worse. I am now on Oxycodone 15mg, 4
pills a day, every 6 hours. When I changed pain specialists at the beginning of
this year, I went to Dr. Minesh Zaveri. He has continued my pain management with
the medication, but in February of 2010, I had a trial procedure done with a
spinal cord stimulator. For those 4 days I was almost pain free with a 90%
reduction in the pain I felt in my left femur. I am now awaiting to go under the
permanent procedure of a Spinal Cord Stimulator in the next few months. That
trial procedure showed me that there was hope for some pain relief in my body
and for the future. I highly recommend to discuss if this might be an option for
anyone who has severe pain that pain medications just aren’t helping. It might
bring the relief you are searching for.