Short term relief.....long term damage!

by Christine
(UK)

Hi, my name is Christine and I am 49 years old. I had my son almost 20 years ago. It was a difficult birth with which I was given an epidural to give me some relief.

He was eventually born by emergency C-section 23 hours later.

Thankfully he was a healthy boy but I suffered years of back pain afterwards.

I was told by the medical staff who cared for me at that time that the catheter needle had become "dislodged" at some point and was only noticed when the "top up" of medication failed to take effect. I am not a scientifically minded person but this is what I believed at that time.

The up shot is that I have recently been diagnozed with spinal stenosis along with osteo arthritis in that area. My GP advised me that I have had this condition for some considerable time. What I do know is that when I sought medical attention after the birth of my son, the xray results came back negative. I therefore did not have any noticable damage to my spine at that time but was told by a specialist that it was most probably down to nerve damage.

I have done a little bit of reading up on spinal stenosis recently and feel confident that I can rule out the "age" factor. Although I am older now I have and continue to try and have a healthy life style. I feel I can pinpoint the catalyst to my current condition to having an epidural almost 20 years ago.

Although I do not negate the advantages of having an epidural I would strongly advise women to educate themselves on the possible side effects. The time to ask a woman to sign a consent form is not during labour! I would gladly have cosented to having my legs amputated at that time!

I hope my story may help someone.

Christine.