How to Manage and Relieve Pain (w/ Dr. Brenda Lau, Pain Specialist and Anesthesiologist)

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One in four people suffers from chronic pain.

That is according to Dr. Brenda Lau, who specializes in pain management. “Pain is not just a physical symptom”, she says, “once it starts affecting the body, the body behave differently, the mind thinks differently, you relate to people differently, it takes over everything.”

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Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue presents Conversations That Matter. Join veteran Broadcaster Stuart McNish each week for an important and engaging Conversation about the issues shaping our future.

ctm031 #pain #health #painmanagement
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Dr Brenda Lau saved my life. Courageous, generous, competent, and caring is she.

K-j
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Doctors in BC are leaving citizens in chronic pain. They are well aware that metal clips and mesh can cause serious damage to organs and tissues. Titanium clips can migrate and perforate the bladder, rectum, intestines, peritoneum and inside the gut wall.

I developed a serious life threatening ischial spine/ inferior hypo gastric and sacral plexus neuropathy at age 51. I couldn’t sit. My rectum felt electrocuted. After four physiotherapist sessions, which were suggested by the gynaecologist I saw, the pain was so bad I could no longer lie down without severe pain. The gynaecologist didn’t examine me.

I’d tried chiropractic sessions, physiotherapy, reflexology, massage therapy ( all of which I paid for ) before I saw a neurosurgeon who didn’t examine me and just brushed me off. The neurologist knew which nerve roots were involved with the neuropathy I had but didn’t order proper nerve blocks. She didn’t do a proper examination either. She did tell me that I had a nerve imbalance. What is that?

I was told I’d be seeing Dr. Brenda Lau at the St. Paul’s Hospital Pain Clinic. I saw her on a Medicine Ward instead. I was at no time given ‘Pain Clinic Intake forms’ to fill out where I could write down and document my past surgeries, the sports I enjoyed, the nature of my work and describe what my severe intractable pain felt like.

Dr. Lau wrote my doctor that I was seen in a Pain Clinic. She misrepresented the truth to my doctor about where she saw me. This is fraud. She also slandered me in the highest degree saying I had several lovers. Why did she state this in her first consult note. That was not true.
She also stated that my husband walked out on me. NOT....I asked for a divorce. My ex was abusive. Why did these statements even appear in a consult note?

Dr. Lau spoke into a tape recorder before we met and said, “ This is the Mother that won’t let go of the apron strings.”. Why did she say this? How would she know that? What did my Mothering have to do with having a pinched sacral nerve?!!!

Dr. Lau knew I was seeing her about acute pelvic pain yet she had no speculum to examine me properly? Why was that? It was because I was seen on a Medicine Ward. What Pain Clinic doesn’t have a speculum available?

This doctor isn’t trained to do nerve blocks with CT or fluoroscopy guidance. She did two nerve blocks on me in the lithotomy position 1st into my vagina and the 2nd into my labia ( done a month apart ) with anaesthetic only. She used no guidance and no steroid. I got no relief and my condition worsened considerably. I hadn’t slept through the night in 8 months! I was losing cognitive function.

Dr. Lau wrote my doctor that her second nerve block was used with guidance when it wasn’t. Both of my nerve blocks were done in an empty OR in the Surgical Daycare Unit. I was never in a radiology suite. A young man wheeled me in on the gurney and he saw me naked from the waste down on both occasions!

Dr. Lau had a trolley with a projector on it. She turned the projector on and she had a transparency on it with a picture of a pelvis. This wasn’t guidance! She committed fraud. A radiologist named Jacquie Brown wrote a brief radiology report saying Dr. Lau used fluoroscopy guidance. No she did not. How would that doctor😮 know? She wasn’t in the room. This is fraud and outright corruption.

Dr, Lau wrote my doctor that her second nerve block lowered my pain considerably without even seeing me for a repeat visit to discuss the outcome? This is fraud!

At no time did I fill out Pain Clinic Repeat Questionnaires. Dr. Lau misrepresented the truth. I had no voice. She didn’t care whatsoever about what I had to say, what I felt was the problem, where the pain was ( she kept saying it was in the vagina when it was in my rectum ! ) and what I felt I needed done.

I was getting desperate. I couldn’t breathe properly the pain was so awful. I wasn’t able to sit. I was standing all day long. I was sitting on ice. My Sympathetic Nervous System was severely agitated.

I brought a family advocate to an appointment with her. In a calm and eloquent way, I asked Dr. Lau if she would order me a CT guided nerve block to be done in into my buttock where the nerve in question is most often pinched. I told her that her nerve blocks hadn’t worked which was the truth. She remained indifferent and refused to order it for me.

My advocate was so disturbed by Dr. Lau’s response to me that she vehemently said, “ Dr. Lau, you order that nerve block now. Do you expect Elizabeth to sit on ice the rest of her life?!!” Dr. Lau was out the door instantly ordering the nerve block I needed. She knew I carried a small cooler with ice packs and pain patches everywhere I had been for the past 8 months! What was she thinking?

At that same appointment, I paid her $40.00 to fill out an, ‘ Out of Province Medical Care Request’ form as I wasn’t getting anywhere with doctors in B C.

I had the nerve block at VGH and it helped. When I saw Dr. Lau two weeks later and asked for another one she WOULD NOT order it. She just didn’t care about me at all. She is cruel hearted.

I developed severe and serious side effects to all the medications she prescribed and none of them helped my severe intractable neuralgia. I became very irritable, I lost my sense of smell and taste for seven years, I developed serotonin syndrome, metabolic syndrome, and I developed a severe bladder infection.

I was never depressed. I love life. I was in a acute pain. It got so bad that I was starting to lose whole bowel movements in the bath and in my underwear!

A kind pharmacist was worried about me. She could see me deteriorating in front of her eyes from being so severely sleep deprived. She suggested I ask Dr. Lau for 10mg codeine to help with sleep.

I made an appointment to see her in a Pain Clinic in the Surrey Memorial Hospital. When I got there I was gob- smacked! This was a real clinic. There were Repeat Visit Pain Questionnaires AND there were copies of the Chronic Pain Society of Canada’s ‘ Conquer Pain’ pamphlets which stated all my rights.

Dr. Lau had violated all my rights as a chronic pain patient! I had every right to being taken seriously, to getting timely care and to suggesting what treatments I needed. The other very disturbing thing about her is she didn’t even let me see the Pain Clinic psychiatrist who could have offered me and my son the emotional support we needed.

I filled out a Repeat Visit Questionnaire and she didn’t even look at it. Why not? I still have it. I asked for 10mg codeine and she prescribed 30 mg codeine instead.. I was so tired I didn’t notice. I went straight to my pharmacy and the pharmacist was shocked. She cut the pills in half and told me to take half a pill only. I did.

The next day I woke up with a headache so painful it felt like my brain was being squished in a vice grip. I went to my local ER and the doctor said I was highly allergic and to cease using the codeine which I did.

Dr. Lau wrote my doctor on the very day she prescribed the codeine and without any Follow Up visit from me, that the 10 mg codeine ( she lied about the strength she had prescribed which was 30 mg !) was decreasing my pain from 9/10 to 6/10. This is fraud! It wasn’t the truth at all.

Long story short. She dropped me as a patient after the neurologist in Toronto referred me to an expert in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Twenty months after this all started ( and by now I’d lost my 31 year career and job ), she wouldn’t refer me to a radiologist who could follow the US doctor’s treatment plan. I was there when my US expert called her to tell her what was my problem.

She knew that the titanium Filshie clips from my previously done tubal ligation had migrated. One of them was on my rectum and the other ended up in ileum bowel under the neck of my bladder. She covered this up. She could have referred me to a gynaecologist to have them removed laparoscopically.

The clips likely played a role in why my pudendal neuropathy became so painful.
That clip left inside my rectum exacerbated the pain caused by ‘ juxtaposed ligaments ‘ in my lower right buttock which were stuck in three spots on my right pudendal nerve. My pudendal nerve was being vice gripped by ligaments it had become stuck onto every time I sat or lay down. It was anguish. 😢

She should be disciplined. She doesn’t care about alleviating complex pain. She is a fraud in the highest degree. I don’t know how she sleeps at night, . She has no compassion or genuine empathy. She is only in the pain business to keep people hurt and to make money. I’m not the only person she has been disingenuous with and whom she has gas-lighted. Other people under her care have languished in utter agony.

BC is in trouble if Dr. Lau is so highly touted. I almost died from her neglect and incompetent treatments. She caused me torture. I now live with severe Central Sensitization and severe neuritis in my rectum which affects bowel, urinary and sexual function.

I AM telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I am disabled because of her neglect. She profiled me and wrote misrepresentations about me. That is defamation.

I am lucky to be alive. This doctor is a glorified criminal. She is the definition of malevolent. I believe she wanted me to die.

elizabethmcleod