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[LuckyinKentucky]

Like one out of every three or five SCI patients I developed HO (heterotrophic ossification)a couple of months after my injury. To this day I am suprised at how readily my rehab doc dismissed the issue, waiting until I raised hell about a lump in my leg to adress it. I had allready been raisin it for a week or two prior due to an increase in my ,then very mild, nerve pain and a decrease in range of motion in the affected hip.

Long story short: the only place I have nerve pain is in my right hip which increased exponentially with the onset of HO. The pain comes in nasty spells or can be lightly constant and is easily initiated by certain leg positions. Minor relief can be given if i apply pressure to the inside of my leg during pain spurts. Often it seems like the pain pulses in tune with my heartbeat.

The doctors around here have been even less helpful than the one in rehab, just trying to prescribe everything under the sun to try to quell it, the topic does not seem to be one of much medical knowledge... at least of the practitioners i've surveyed... Google has told me more than they have!

I have compiled my own theory which I'd hoped somebody could give merit to or shoot down. My guess is that the damaged nerve as well as the artery has been encased in the bonelike mass created by the ossification. This would explain the heartbeat correlation only if the vein and the nerve took up nearly the same space, like if they ran alongside each other.

Since I tend to ramble on in my posts I'll try to nail down some direct questions here.


Has anyones HO affected their nerve pain?

Is anyones neuro pain(in paralyzed areas) affected by applying pressure?

Does anyone know if the HO could compress the main leg nerve into the main artery?