When I first got to the UCSF I was ready To kick this pain out of my life; THAT was what I wanted to do more than anything! I met the Dr. who was the head of the Neurology department, Dr. Nicolas Barbaro. He was a good Dr. but seemed to be rather busy, UCSF is a pretty big hospital). Now no one had told me that I was supposed to bring the MRI they had taken of my brain after the stroke, and I wouldn’t know where to get it at anyway as I’d had about 100. The only thing he did have was a Dr.’s the report of what they found from the scan, so he went by that. He looked at the report for awhile then he said “Mr. Brown, this is saying that there was no cause found for your stroke”. I was thinking, THAT was kinda weird… WHY would I have had the stroke in the first place, and why am I having all this pain on the side of me that had no feeling anyway! He then proceeded to ask me if I have ever done drugs; I was floored! Why would he even ask me a question like that and I told him I had smoked marijuana, he said, “no hard drugs, then”, I said no… ANYWAY, Long story, Dr. Barbaro said that he was sending to the “Pain Management” clinic as this was the starting point.
Dr. Barbaro had his assistant got me an appointment with another Dr. at UCSF, and for the life of me I can’t remember this gentleman’s name. But he was a great Dr. and I liked him right off the bat. He made me feel like he wanted to help me. Not only did he believe me about the pain, he said we were going to “get to the bottom of it”.
Of course, this was going to be one “wild ride”, and take more than two years along with hundreds of tests and and procedure’s but I was ready to at least find out what this pain was and try to be rid if it.
I hope you come back to read the rest of this story!
See you next post!