Suspecting peripheral nerve damage after colorectal surgery ...

Hello to everyone here ...

It was on the 3rd of December 2015 when I underwent my right hemicolectomy operation, here in Ayrshire, Scotland; that was the day that I lost most of my sense of balance.  Over the time since then, two years and eight months, I have experience the feeling of being permanently "drunk", with the feeling of that "thick head" that goes with it ... I kid you not, and this has been without the benefit of alcohol!  This feeling of unsteadiness and mild sore head never gets better, but it sometimes does get worse.  I have been pretty much housebound over these thirty two months, only going out and about under certain conditions, such as when there is someone available to accompany me and act as a steadying hand, or when I take my walking stick and am driven by friends on short journeys that end up in places where I do not need to walk very much; 100yds in a straight line is a real challenge.  I previously did try driving, but even though I could do that, sitting on my butt, I didn't feel very safe, and anyway, I knew it was not the right thing to do, so, I do not drive any more; my Sweetheart of an Angel wife takes me wherever I need to go, in addition of course to those occasional social outings where my friends do the driving. 

In terms of medical investigations into this condition, which is one of a number that I have, practically no progress has been made in identifying what is the actual cause.  I have been scanned a lot; MRI scans of my brain show nothing out of place; CT scans all over my torso reveal zilch; I've also had a full body PET scan as well, but that was for my lung cancer, where nothing else untoward showed up anyway, and, the various consultants I have spoken to in the interim do not seem to have much of a clue; I appear to them as a medical conundrum, it seems.  Well, that was the case until I spoke for the first time, just the other day, to a lovely lady doctor from Hungary.  This lady said something rather simple to me after having me perform a particular test ... she got me to attempt standing on my toes, which was surprisingly okay for me ... then, she got me to attempt standing on my heels ... absolutely no chance, I was wobbling all over the place and reaching out for things to hang on to; the nice nurse who was also in attendance was particularly swift on her toes!

After this test, and after I had explained all that had gone on in the search for what might be the root cause - this being an account during which I mentioned in particular the MRI scans of my brain - she said "this is not to do with your brain, it about your legs, where probable nerve damage has also caused your chronic neuropathic pain" (I had also already informed her of those pains I had experienced in the past.)  The thing about this for me at the time was that, not one of the many doctors and consultants I had talked with before this, had ever come up with anything that was, quite frankly, so simple a test and diagnosis.  Things started to make sense to me after hearing this, inasmuch as I had previously and constantly been concentrating purely on potential damage to my brain, through some as yet unidentified means back then on the 3rd of December 2015.  It is worth saying that any form of damage to my centre of balance (inner ear related) was already ruled out very early on by an ENT consultant.

Having always tended to place a great deal of faith in the overall workings of the NHS (National Health Service) here in Scotland, I had previously felt no real motivation to go look for myself, to see if I, as a layman in the world of medicine, could search out effectively for myself a potential candidate for the cause for my complicated malady.  It was soon after that that I turned to being far more precise with my use of search terms on the internet; I started searching for very specific words and phrases ... I first of all typed in "neurological damage after colorectal surgery" ... lo and behold, the first document I looked at was a detailed medical paper on 'patients suffering peripheral nerve damage as a result of colorectal operations'.  This was gold to me, so, I looked a bit further and found, in addition to many other documents on this subject, this Cancer Survivors Network, which I promptly joined, as I have not previously been communicating with any fellow travellers on this cancer journey.  And so, here I am with my story, wondering if anyone else out there has experienced anything similar, and if so, what did you do about it?  In fact, I welcome any and all commentary on this ... I'm truly fed up with feeling the 'thick head of drunkenness' all the time ... in short, this whole affair has turned my life upside down, totally ... and I'm just a young 64 !!!

Kind regards to all ...