[QUAD-L] Pain and AD

[Lana Baugh]

I have posted several times about Gabe, my son and a problem that he is having with autonomic dysreflexia (AD) and pain.  It started with AD in the late afternoon and some bladder and bowel spasms would follow. The Ad would resolve when he would lay down.  Now he has serious pain. We have been to all the doc’s. The urologist says he has two kidney stones. One in each kidney. She thinks they are to small to cause the problem, but says it’s possible. Neurosurgeon says his shunts are ok and he does not think anything in the spine could cause this. The abdominal ct shows a small gall stone in the neck of the gall bladder. The surgeon doubts it’s the cause.   So I started thinking about when was the last time Gabe had pain like this. It was before he got his baclofen pump and the central cord pain, skin pain and spasms about killed him.  He got a new pump last summer and almost died from an allergic reaction to an antibiotic. So he went two months last summer without his pump when he was in the hospital. He was drugged on morphine for most of the time. He was too ill from the allergic reaction to replace the pump. So his baclofen pump dose now is a lot lower then it was before last summer.   So the question is…. could the pain that is going on now be central cord pain and the AD be a response to the central cord pain.   I’ve made an apt for him to see his rehab doc. Until then I’m going to give him oral baclofen everyday as an experiment.   What do you guys think? I’m asking you guys because Gabe can’t tell me everything that’s going on.  When it comes to this problem he can just tell me about the pain.   Help!   Gabe’s mom