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Stabbed in the Back: Are childbirth epidurals really safe?
Strap yourself in …The astonishing true story of medical Arachnoiditis.
“It’s impossible not to think of Henry Marsh’s super-selling Do No Harm”– Positive TV
A beautiful young woman with big dreams and a great career in IT emigrates from Russia to London, falls in love, marries, and goes to the hospital to have her first baby, a happy and healthy little girl.
It’s a modern-day fairy tale come true, until…she is rocked by pain unlike any she has experienced. She tells her husband, her family, her doctors, but no one believes her. The doctors do tests – but nothing.
When she persists, they tell her it is all in her head – that she is making it up, that she is a stressed-out new mum, that she is losing it. Broken down, eventually she starts to believe them, questioning her own sanity, suffering beyond belief...
But she’s not insane – and nor are they. The hospital has been hiding something. Her medical records have been falsified. And so, her investigative journey begins. Is she uncovering one of the most shocking medical cover-ups of the 21st Century?
If you are an expectant mother-to-be, or have experienced unexplained pain ever since childbirth, this book is a must-read.
Endorsement from Forest Tennant, M.D., Dr.P.H.
Doctor Tennant is a member of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, the Academy of Integrative Pain Management, the American Pain Society, and the American Society of Addiction Medicine. He has authored over 300 scientific articles and books.
Samara has captured the essence of problems that have been ignored for far too long. Every woman needs to know that adhesive arachnoiditis is a risk with an epidural anaesthetic injection that is given for childbirth. She raises two even more important points. One is that the physicians giving epidural injections don’t know that there is a pretty good emergency anecdote if arachnoiditis symptoms occur after the epidural. Even more, she tells the world a sad tale. Physicians, as a group, still don’t realize that simple treatment protocols have been developed for AA, and they can and should be administered in every community. Untreated, AA is a miserable, suffering, disease that takes one’s life long before its time. Samara’s book will help turn the tide.Forest Tennant
Samara Jones’ Stabbed in the Back Is an eloquent cri de coeur on behalf of the millions maimed by unnecessary invasive spinal procedures in general and by childbirth epidurals in particular. This is a short but necessary treatise on the dangers of misplaced hypodermic needles that cause intense and intractable pain and suffering. The disease in question is adhesive arachnoiditis, inflammation of nerves in the spinal cord caused in the main by medical intervention. Therefore, cover-up and denial by the medical profession are par for the course. A Russian who came to live in the United Kingdom, Samara's love for the British way of life became sorely tested by years of being pummelled by the medical profession, which regarded her awful symptoms as "all in the head". Call it ignorance or call it obfuscation, I call it downright cruelty. Roger Radford, author of ‘Cry of the Needle’.
“It’s impossible not to think of Henry Marsh’s super-selling Do No Harm”– Positive TV
A beautiful young woman with big dreams and a great career in IT emigrates from Russia to London, falls in love, marries, and goes to the hospital to have her first baby, a happy and healthy little girl.
It’s a modern-day fairy tale come true, until…she is rocked by pain unlike any she has experienced. She tells her husband, her family, her doctors, but no one believes her. The doctors do tests – but nothing.
When she persists, they tell her it is all in her head – that she is making it up, that she is a stressed-out new mum, that she is losing it. Broken down, eventually she starts to believe them, questioning her own sanity, suffering beyond belief...
But she’s not insane – and nor are they. The hospital has been hiding something. Her medical records have been falsified. And so, her investigative journey begins. Is she uncovering one of the most shocking medical cover-ups of the 21st Century?
If you are an expectant mother-to-be, or have experienced unexplained pain ever since childbirth, this book is a must-read.
Endorsement from Forest Tennant, M.D., Dr.P.H.
Doctor Tennant is a member of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, the Academy of Integrative Pain Management, the American Pain Society, and the American Society of Addiction Medicine. He has authored over 300 scientific articles and books.
Samara has captured the essence of problems that have been ignored for far too long. Every woman needs to know that adhesive arachnoiditis is a risk with an epidural anaesthetic injection that is given for childbirth. She raises two even more important points. One is that the physicians giving epidural injections don’t know that there is a pretty good emergency anecdote if arachnoiditis symptoms occur after the epidural. Even more, she tells the world a sad tale. Physicians, as a group, still don’t realize that simple treatment protocols have been developed for AA, and they can and should be administered in every community. Untreated, AA is a miserable, suffering, disease that takes one’s life long before its time. Samara’s book will help turn the tide.Forest Tennant
Samara Jones’ Stabbed in the Back Is an eloquent cri de coeur on behalf of the millions maimed by unnecessary invasive spinal procedures in general and by childbirth epidurals in particular. This is a short but necessary treatise on the dangers of misplaced hypodermic needles that cause intense and intractable pain and suffering. The disease in question is adhesive arachnoiditis, inflammation of nerves in the spinal cord caused in the main by medical intervention. Therefore, cover-up and denial by the medical profession are par for the course. A Russian who came to live in the United Kingdom, Samara's love for the British way of life became sorely tested by years of being pummelled by the medical profession, which regarded her awful symptoms as "all in the head". Call it ignorance or call it obfuscation, I call it downright cruelty. Roger Radford, author of ‘Cry of the Needle’.
154 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 17, 2020
Dinara Farina's Stabbed in the Back Is an eloquent cri de coeur on behalf of the millions maimed by unnecessary invasive spinal procedures in general and by childbirth epidurals in particular. This is a short but necessary treatise on the dangers of misplaced hypodermic needles that cause intense and intractable pain and suffering. The disease in question is adhesive arachnoiditis, inflammation of nerves in the spinal cord caused in the main by medical intervention. Therefore cover-up and denial by the medical profession are par for the course. A Russian who came to live in the United Kingdom, Dinara's love for the British way of life became sorely tested by years of being pummelled by the medical profession, which regarded her awful symptoms as "all in the head". Call it ignorance or call it obfuscation, I call it downright cruelty. I, myself, am a victim of a misplaced epidural while undergoing a myelogram in 1979. I suffered agonies, the cause of which went undiagnosed until 1998. Like Dinara, I too felt the need to express my anger at the medical profession, as well as drug companies who produced and marketed spinal dyes too toxic for use in animals, let alone in human beings. Hence my award-winning thriller, Cry of the Needle. As far as I know, Dinara and I are the only victims to have written books about arachnoiditis and its consequences. Charles Burton, one of the world's leading neurosurgeons, wrote that this iatrogenic disease causes "the pain of cancer without the release of death." I can attest to that, but I can also say that, again like Dinara, one should never give up. Through the knowledge of modern attempts to tackle the symptoms without the use of opioids, I can now more or less lead a normal life, with only minor symptoms. So there is hope. And there is also hope that women in childbirth will never again have to face the possibility of a misplaced epidural again. An Israeli start-up, Omeq Medical, is developing a single-use smart epidural needle system for safe, accurate epidural injections. Currently, anaesthetists rely solely on their own expertise in judging the so-called Loss of Resistance (LoR technique) when inserting the needle. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that these medical professionals will be ready to accept anything that substitutes certainty for inflated confidence in their own ability to "stick it in the right place". Stabbed in the Back is required reading for both expectant mothers and the medical profession. Roger Radford, author of Cry of the Needle.
June 20, 2020
Brave and honest: a searing indictment of medical mismanagement
Thank you, Dinara, for your beautiful writing about adhesive arachnoiditis, an ugly iatrogenic* disease and the even uglier side of the medical establishment you encountered. It’s horrifying that through ignorance, modern medical protocols may be creating new cases daily while genuinely trying to alleviate suffering.
I too endure AA. Ironically it must have started from any of the last-ditch treatments attempting to correct the disabling spinal condition I was born with. I’ll never know. Like you, I was warned of everything else but AA before submitting to treatment. But frankly, I was so desperate for some relief I may not have cared. And now all of us must find some way to live with the devastating, unintended consequences. It’s a vicious circle that the author describes too well.
Thank you, too, for calling out the work of Dr, David Tennant and other dedicated medical professionals whose work on our behalf is under-appreciated by their peers and often attacked.
Wishing you and your family and everyone suffering from AA the best of luck. We need it!
* iatrogenic= Disease caused by medical treatment
Thank you, Dinara, for your beautiful writing about adhesive arachnoiditis, an ugly iatrogenic* disease and the even uglier side of the medical establishment you encountered. It’s horrifying that through ignorance, modern medical protocols may be creating new cases daily while genuinely trying to alleviate suffering.
I too endure AA. Ironically it must have started from any of the last-ditch treatments attempting to correct the disabling spinal condition I was born with. I’ll never know. Like you, I was warned of everything else but AA before submitting to treatment. But frankly, I was so desperate for some relief I may not have cared. And now all of us must find some way to live with the devastating, unintended consequences. It’s a vicious circle that the author describes too well.
Thank you, too, for calling out the work of Dr, David Tennant and other dedicated medical professionals whose work on our behalf is under-appreciated by their peers and often attacked.
Wishing you and your family and everyone suffering from AA the best of luck. We need it!
* iatrogenic= Disease caused by medical treatment
November 29, 2020
Read before childbirth or getting an epidural
This book is not just about a horrible, painful disease that’s caused by doctors. It’s also an engaging story about a young woman and her dreams starting in the USSR. From the beginning she had me interested and held my interest the entire time. I had a difficult time putting it down so I read it in two days!
I bought this book because just like the author, I also have Arachnoiditis caused by a careless doctor; only mine wasn’t due to childbirth. I got many epidurals for sciatic nerve pain. No one should go near the pristine cerebral spinal fluid in your spinal column EVER.
If you or a family member are getting ready to give birth or considering Epidural Steroid Injections (ESI) please read this book. Even if you’re not, it’s a really well told story.
This book is not just about a horrible, painful disease that’s caused by doctors. It’s also an engaging story about a young woman and her dreams starting in the USSR. From the beginning she had me interested and held my interest the entire time. I had a difficult time putting it down so I read it in two days!
I bought this book because just like the author, I also have Arachnoiditis caused by a careless doctor; only mine wasn’t due to childbirth. I got many epidurals for sciatic nerve pain. No one should go near the pristine cerebral spinal fluid in your spinal column EVER.
If you or a family member are getting ready to give birth or considering Epidural Steroid Injections (ESI) please read this book. Even if you’re not, it’s a really well told story.
January 23, 2021
Very well written and readable
This book tells the truth about living with Adhesive Arachnoiditis; the medical harm, the sudden relegation to lifelong pain and disability.
@ACMCRN is a nonprofit Arachnoiditis Collaborative Research Network, highly recommends this true story
This book tells the truth about living with Adhesive Arachnoiditis; the medical harm, the sudden relegation to lifelong pain and disability.
@ACMCRN is a nonprofit Arachnoiditis Collaborative Research Network, highly recommends this true story
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews