Linda Kurowski can happily say she’s living a real life. She’s walking her dogs, spending time with her children and going out to dinner with her husband.
She’s enjoying what each day brings. But she couldn’t do that for 18 years.
She developed a painful nerve condition in her left foot after a work accident.
“I was working and a mannequin base – it’s 35 pounds – fell off a shelf and onto my foot,” Linda says. “Right through a boot with steel toes. Severed a nerve in my foot.”
For six months, Linda went without a diagnosis. She saw six doctors before she was diagnosed with reflex sympathetic dystrophy.
It results in pain, tingling, numbness or weakness, usually in the hands or feet.
Linda experienced burning, sharp pain in her left foot.
“I couldn’t walk through a mall. I couldn’t walk around a block. I couldn’t go to my children’s events. I basically was trapped to the couch or my back yard,” Linda says.
She saw 15 different doctors in Green Bay and Milwaukee over the next 18 years. No one could help until she met with a 16th doctor, Dr. Danqing Guo. He is a physician with BayCare Clinic Pain & Rehab Medicine.
“Right away, he made me throw out any diagnosis I had before. He said that didn’t matter, we’re just going to fix it,” Linda says.
Guo considered that she suffered from peripheral nerve entrapment neuropathy and treated her using ultrasound-guided hydrodissection.
Hydrodissection is a non-surgical procedure in which small amounts of fluid are injected around nerves to create space between them and impinging tissues or tendons.
Linda’s quality of life improved immediately after her first treatment.
“I used to go in there crying. It’s never gotten that bad again,” Linda says.
Guo has treated Linda for four years. She has follow-up appointments every six to nine months for hydrodissection treatments.
“He saved my marriage. He saved my children, my grandchildren,” she says. “He’s my hero. … He saved my life.”