f13.net

I suspect that there's a lot of people on these boards who, like me, spend a lot of time sitting down in front of computers. If so then I'd like to heartily recommend paying some attention to your postures and your backs!

I've had lower back trouble for about 8 years, ever since I tripped over a doorstep carrying a small cabinet and fell and twisted. I've had a couple of incidents since then that have left me in some serious pain for a while, but 3 weeks ago I had a real bad one. Was having a bad night because of leg & back pains after a particularly physical week's work, got up to do some yoga stretches and *POP* my back went. Felt the disc pop out and thought "uh oh". Cutting a long story short there followed the 3 most intense days of my life racked with utter searing agony like I cannot describe.

Ibuprofen, paracetamol, diclofenac, codeine, tramadol and cannabis got me through that, along with my girlfriend who was just so awesome and amazing that words fail me. Now I'm waiting for an MRI scan and once we have the results of that we'll see what happens next. Pretty certain it's full-on sciatica (which is to say, one of my spinal discs protruding and pressing on the sciatic nerve, causing pain (PAIN), numbness, weakness in the back, buttock and leg), just hoping we can get it sorted without surgery.

Read some stuff (particularly a book by a guy called Robin McKenzie) in the last few weeks about this kind of thing and man, I wish I'd known some of this stuff years ago, I could have saved myself a boatload of pain. I really, seriously recommend everyone finds out about backs and how to sit, stand, lift, etc in ways that protect your lower back, because I wouldn't wish the last weeks I've had on anyone!

Anyway, that's why I'm not posting much anywhere anymore, I need to save my allowed computer time (like, 30 mins/day is all I can cope with atm) for more important stuff :p

What a useless post for this forum, the information is only relevant for those that have spines.

Haha shit, sorry, I should have searched for the vertebrate sub-forum :P

I won't repost my whole sciatica story again, but just thought I'd wish you luck. I went through about 9 months of it and was lucky that it corrected itself without surgery. Three years later, and everything is good - I can even golf again.

So what do you recommend for those of us that spend, say, half or more of their waking life sitting in front of a PC?  I'm pretty sure it's turning me into a blind, irritable ogre.

Ironically, I used to have constant (though minor) back pain that I thought was an obvious result of both bad posture and extended time in from of the computer.  After shedding 40 pounds and getting back into shape, I found that it was actually because I was a fat, lazy fuck.  I don't have a hint of pain anymore.

A friend of mine did the same thing; he bent down to pick up his dog and POP! 2 surgeries later he's still in occasional pain.

I fell off a wall while bouldering (climbing short walls without rope up to 10-15 feet) about two years ago. I landed badly in a twisting motion, and only noticed something was wrong a few hours later when I was really stiff while sitting in my computer chair.

I woke up the next morning unable to get out of bed - the muscles in the right side of my lower back had seized up and were pushing up against the nerves, leaving me unable to bend forward without excruciating pain. I was literally unable to sit up to get out of bed. I finally ended up being able to get out of bed only by rolling off it and catching myself on my knees and crawling to the bathroom where I stood under a hot shower until the water ran cold, trying to get the muscles to loosen. No luck.

The pain. Let me tell you about the pain. It was worse than when I broke my arm, it was worse than when I went over the handlebars of my bike without a shirt on and slid 15 feet down a drainage ditch. It was worse than getting your hand caught in a door. It was pretty much the worst pain that I've ever felt; the worst part of the worst pain in my life is that you've got no adrenaline to dull it; it's not like being hurt in sports or at the gym, it's pretty much just a white hot poker of fire that screams "STOP WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING, IDIOT", without almost any warning. You quickly learn to heed it, and even now after 2 years I'm getting remembrance pains just talking about it.

What makes back pain particularly horrible, though, is trying to avoid it and being unable to. Almost everything uses your lower back. Walking, for example, is leaning slightly forward and then putting your feet out to catch your controlled fall. Only I couldn't lean forward. Quickly, I learned to walk, but walk like an old man, perfectly straight and with small steps to keep my center of gravity over my feet. One small slip though, one bend too far forward, and I was on my knees in pain. It was pretty horrible. It got bad enough that in one instance, on my way to the bathroom, I leaned over too far and reflexively relaxed all my muscles and went to my knees to try and stop the pain, and of course, that overrode my bladder muscles. It wasn't pretty.

So I get to the doctor, and she asks "on a scale on one to ten about what level is the pain" and I say "I'd say probably an 8, or maybe a bit more". She mentions that it's one of the worst pains people can feel and that often people say that it is, in fact, an 11 out of 10. I wanted to leave room at the top - I figure there's always something worse. I hope that I never discover what that might be.

Anyway, am pretty soon riding high on the triple play of steroids, muscle relaxants, and pain killers. I sleep and lay on the couch for 3 days before the muscle in my back finally un-knots, and it takes me another two months of physical therapy before I can really climb again. Now I'm more careful.

This thread is making me wince in sympathetic agony.  Stop it.

Also, I find the idea of a Vertebrate sub-forum pleasing.

Then we should have an Invertebrate forum for Lawyers and Marketing.

 :awesome_for_real:

Sounds painful! I've recently had something close to what Bhodi had from helping a customer lift a 4x8 sheet of 3/4" MDF and having him let his side go to answer his phone. Needless to say I too spent a couple days unable to move in most directions. Of course it doesn't help that I was born with an extra disc in my lower spine, so anything bad that happens to my back that causes pain is multiplied 10 fold. I've had some horrible moments where my back muscles just give up and I just fall to the floor and become a horrible mess of pain. I'd assume the fetal position, but that would probably hurt more.

I'm going to go one step further and say if you have any abnormal amounts of back pain and often when you haven't done anything strenuous, you should get X-Rays taken just in case. I thought it was bad posture, but turned out to be a pesky extra disc.

My back pain got better when I bought a treadmill but now it's not so good again, though not as bad as before. 

Oh, I have to have surgery on my thumb in a couple of weeks.  MY THUMB!  I'll have to get all my hitch-hiking done before that, just in case.  I hope I pull through.  I hope I don't lose my thumb or I'll only be half evolved.  Actually, it's out-patient, only takes 30 minutes and four or five stitches.  Still, it's DIRE because you never know what I might do to that doctor if it pinches a bit.  I could accidentally kick his ass.

Damn. Sorry to hear this guys.  :oops: I have nightmares about back injuries. That's the number one place I do not want to be hurt.

As much as it seems like I'm using a computer a lot, I'm actually quite a fidgety bastard. Whether it's games or work. I have to get up a lot and walk around. Hell, I can barely even sit in a comfortable seat and watch a movie without leaving for a bit.

When you get better, find a good Pilates class and attend. (By good, I'd personally say you want as near to a one-on-one instruction as you can - if you were in the UK, I'd say find a Body Control Pilates teacher). Then find a decent Chiropractor who will work with you and who you feel comfortable with.

Some people will tell you that Pilates is a waste of time and money and they're probably right if you only have the usual over subscribed gym based classes but here's a true story:

6 years ago, I spent the first week of my honeymoon sleeping mostly on the floor because all the standing around we did on our wedding day antagonised my sciatica crippled my already bad back.  When we got back, I took up Pilates (as well as lost some weight and started exercising more regularly). My back pain eased up.  Several visits to a new chriporactor in the town we moved to realigned my spine and corrected my postures (thanks to insoles and arch supports).

2 years after my wedding, my back was in good enough condition to start playing rugby and these days I don't have back problems at all.  It was other, finger related injuries that made me give that up (see Schild's finger slicing thread) so Signe, you have my sympathy.

Sorry to hear so many of you have had similar problems, you all have my utmost sympathies, but I'm very grateful for the various suggestions. Pilates is something I've thought about before - I do some yoga and one of the yoga instructors I had a while ago also taught Pilates and it sounded interesting. Similarly for the Alexander technique - my dad also had sciatica about 10 years ago and he swears by it.

Anyway, had an MRI yesterday and a 2nd one today with a contrast medium (which unfortunately is just a gadolinium injection, not some kind of fortune teller which would be far more entertaining) so hopefully we'll get results next week and get on the waiting list for some physiotherapy.

In the meantime can I just say that tramadol is an awesome, awesome drug. When my pain was so bad the other week that one of our neighbours actually knocked on the door to see what the screaming was all about the tramadol shut me right up :D

My best suggestion, that I find no one does, is ice AND heat your back while laying down. Obviously alternate between the two, but the combination does wonders. A lot of people stick with one or the other, but icing only helps inflamation while heat helps relax the muscle. After my workplace injury I was alternating between the two every half hour or so. Had I not, I don't think I would of been able to bend forward during my first week.

My GP told me to put ice on my thumb.  After about five or ten minutes, it started to ache.  It got progressively worse and worse for a couple of hours.  It drove me nuttier.  Nuttiest, even.  Of course, my thumb isn't your back so, well, nothing else.  That's all.   :ye_gods:

How long did you ice it for?  20 mins of ice, then take it off and let it rest for 2 hours.  Same with heat therapy.

R.I.C.E= Rest, Ice Compression, and Elevation is used for most join injuries, except for backs, those you can modify and add alternating heat and cold therapy.

I can join the bad back club. I had a discectomy (http://www.spine.org/Pages/ConsumerHealth/SpineConditionsAndTreatments/CommonProblemsCorrectiveActions/CommonSurgicalProcedures/Discectomy.aspx) for my 30th Birthday (3 years ago).

The year before was complete misery. I had a pinched nerve because of the bulging disc and it felt like I had torn my left hamstring. After a while the pain moved into my lower back and culminated in severe back spasms at random times when I would sit or stand. Imagine a calf cramp but in your lower back...

I spent about 10 months going through first physical therapy, then muscle relaxers, oral steroids, steroid injects straight into the disc, electrode therapy, and then finally I had enough and requested the surgery because my mind was a complete mess from all the muscle relaxers and pain killers I was on.

Took about 4 weeks for 80% recovery but I had numbness in my left foot for about 6 months afterward. Now it's just a low constant ache in my back which I can deal with and I could probably improve even that if I wasn't a lazy fuck who spends 12+ hours a day at a computer screen.

After about 15 minutes or so, it started to feel uncomfortable so I stopped.  Within ten minutes it was aching like crazy, my thumb joint, the base and even down my wrist.  Strangely when I shower or wash my hands in warm water, it feels better for a bit and the joint feels looser.  Anyway, it doesn't matter anymore.  I have to go under the knife!  Anything could happen!  I  COULD DIE.  Srsly.

You mean like, on your drive to the doctor's office?

Oh sure, make jokes, but a woman without thumbs is nearly useless at gouging.  Lucky you.

Other things you'll struggle with include:

- Flipping coins at the start of football games
- Puttingspacesbetweenwordswhiletyping
- Picking your nose with your thumb
- Thumb Wrestling
- Being a member of the primate family
- Twiddling

Picking your nose with your thumb?  You either have wee, dainty thumbs or huge ginormous nostrils!  I vote for the tiny penis!

See, now you're just trying to be hurtful.  Congratulations, it worked.

Oh sure.  Like anyone brings their feelings to f13!  You're just trying to tease.

Just checking Signe, I didn't think you would be a cold injury in July due to sticking your hand in a tub of ice for 2 hours and then wondering what happened.  But I have patients that I tell them how to do cold therapy, hand them written instructions on cold therapy, then show up later wondering why it looking weird and hurting.  Or worse, the gals with UTI's and tell them to push the fluids, well we have had a couple of ladies over push the water and end up back in with chemical imbalances (not quite water intox, but pretty near it).

Good luck on the surgery, are they putting you under for it?  Some hand surgeries they can do with conscious sedation and local blocks, but it all depends on you and your surgeon and how you would best handle the procedure.

No, I'll get happy medicine but not go under.  It seems a relatively short thing.  I've seen the entire operation online now.  It looks icky.  I probably won't really die but I'll get a cool scab and maybe a scar.

Spent yesterday laid up with back problems. Had just drifted off to sleep when my phone decided to finally send me a text message sent hours before. Scared me straight awake and I wrenched my back while doing it. Woke up pretty much crippled. Lots of aspirin and ice, and much groaning/complaining/bitching. Back at work today, but it is still nice and stiff. Oh joy.

I have a spondylolisthesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spondylothesis) that has led to two degenerated discs and arthritis in my back.  I'm on diclofenac to help the pain and am supposed to be losing weight and strengthening my core. I had some success using a Swiss Ball (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_ball) for workouts (combined with riding a stationary bike and lifting weights) but I've been such a slacker lately I've gained everything back.

What exactly is wrong with your thumb Signe? Sounds painful :(

WayAbvPar - have you had problems before? If not then that kind of thing is exactly the kind of thing that can be the start of shit that ends up where I am. Really worth going to see a doctor about, see if you can get a referral to a back specialist or a physiotherapist. Hope it clears up!

Spondylolisthesis sounds nasty too Abagadro - it's one of the conditions that I've seen often referred to as contraindications for lots of the therapies to treat my problems :(

As for me, got my MRI results, I've got one ruptured disc (the L5/S1, the lowest disc) and the material from inside that disc has leaked out and is pressing on the sciatic nerve, hence the blinding agony etc. Both my doctor and all the research I've been reading since (I'm a doctor's nightmare, I actually dig out research and clinical reports and meta-studies) suggests that an "aggressive conservative" approach has the highest rate of success, i.e. rest, painkillers, physiotherapy, exercise. We're gonna keep surgical options open as a last resort though.

Tell ya though, this has made me aware of just how common these problems are. Pretty much everyone I've spoken to about it has either had it (or similar things) themselves or they have a close relative who has. Even my GP has had exactly the same thing! Also I'm knocked out by how helpful and supportive people have been, from my college who've given me access to a disabled parking bay (when I can actually drive again, ha!) to my neighbours who've been knocking on the door every couple of days to see if I need anything and my girlfriend who has suddenly had to deal with a 39 year old total invalid for 3 weeks! People are great sometimes, for real.

That's similar to what my dad had except he also had a piece of bone break off and start floating around in his spinal column randomly pinching that nerve. He ultimately had to be opened up, the stuff cleared out and the two vertebrae fused. It took a while to recover but after after that he was pretty good to go even golfing constantly. This was 20 years ago so I'm sure the procedures have gotten better.  At least they have a good diagnosis now and you can start working on relief. I hope it goes well.

What you described Apocrypha is pretty much the exact diagnosis I had. For me, it was take it easy, learn what hurts and don't do that, and light very low motion range excercise.

Zombies never fall for the same trick twice, eh? :vv:

apocrypha,

See my post above. I went through just about the same exact thing. I actually had two bulging discs. The l4/l5 and the l5/s1. They decided that the L4/L5 was causing the biggest problems so when I did get around to surgery they only fixed that one and just shot up the other spot with steroids again.

Good luck with the alternative approaches. The first time I had an issue, when I was 26, physical therapy worked great and I didn't have a problem again for the next 3 years. The next time around though nothing really helped.

If you get to the point of the steroid injects into your lower back don't let it freak you out. I was actually more concerned about the injections than I was the actual surgery and the injections were like nothing. Unfortunately the injections also only provided benefit for about 2-3 days as opposed to the 2-3 months they are supposed to last.

And now I think I have to quit reading this thread as it's making by back hurt all over again lol... Nothing like psychosomatic injuries.

Yep. I was carted out of my office on a backboard by the fire department about 5 years ago. Woke up with back pain, but ignored it and went to work. It went into full spasm and became unbearable. Laid down on the floor of my cube to try to stretch it out, but couldn't get relief and then couldn't get up. I was out of work for at least a week, and in pain for 3 weeks. Now every time my back gets the slightest twinge I dive for the ice packs and get horizontal ASAP.

My sister had back surgery about a year and a half ago.  She had stenosis and all sorts of problems with discs.  She was crazy with pain before and the recovery was really hard, but now she's so glad she had it.  She still has a little back pain now and then, but nothing like before.  She's back to doing nearly everything she used to, except for some martial arts classes she used to take.  Evidently, not everyone is as lucky as she is with the success of this sort of surgery, though.  Dodgy backs run in my family, but I'm hoping never to have to go through that sort of stuff.  Geez, can you imagine?  No thumbs or spine?  Might as well be a booger.

backs fucking suck

c5-c6, c6-c7, L4-L5, L5-S1 all borked from years of abuse with lacrosse, kayaking and mtn. biking.  The L5-S1 is the worst... and gaming, when i am being honest with myself, sure as fuck doesn't help things.

I do pilates, gyrotonic, and see an extremely good chiro at least once a month.  I am still in pain more often than not.  I have thought of surgery, but every doctor I have spoken to has said to hold out as long as i possibly can before surgery.


take care of your back.  I would in the blink of an eye let someone take a pair of tin snips and cut both my ACLs if it meant i could have my back back.  ACLs can be repaired, but there isn't a single activity that doesn't involve at some lvl your back


So ask for help moving stuff, bend at the knees all that crap

Damn, how old are you guys, if you don't mind me asking? Do I have back pain to look forward to or some shit? I'm 31 now. My back *so far, and God willing* is fine.

[edit] I only ask because it seems to be a widespread problem. More than I thought.

Yup, identical to mine! I don't think the steroid injections are used much here, at least there's been no mention of it as a possibility - the only surgery any of the NHS peeps have talked about is microdiscectomy, and only as a last resort. Don't know if that means that they don't think I'm suitable for anything else or if it's just a UK thing. I'm hard to freak out with injections and stuff anyway - findnig out about stuff makes it easier for me, I just get interested :p

Defo see someone about it then imo if you haven't already. Classic progression of back probs according to stuff I've been reading - a series of events building in severity :/


True, but I've known enough sporty people with ACL injuries that mean I wouldn't wish that one on anyone either :p


I'm 39 now, the first injury was when I was 32 or so. And yeah, it's amazingly common, something like 1 in 3 will have back probs at some point in their lives. Everyone I speak to has either had them themselves or has a close relative who has :(

I'm 23. My doctor makes fun of me for having more problems than he does.

Late to the thread, was on vacation and only reading the gaming forum and guitar thread :)

My mother just went through sciatica, and she's not out of the woods yet, something still wrong with her leg. Insurance is finally letting her get an MRI...over two months later.

Proper posture can't be stressed enough, I spent a few years unloading trucks and laughed at the pathetic lifting belts walmart makes you wear. I never wore one, always (well...almost always) lifted properly, and I was a lifting machine. Box says two-man lift? Fuck that, hoist it up on the shoulder! Abdominal and lower back strength is critical to a healthy back. Lift with the legs. Stretch alot. When using the computer alot, get up and do stretches every now and again and do some exercises like jumping jacks to get the blood flowing. Squats, even without weights at first, are maybe the best way to learn proper lifting, but get a coach to learn them right, and have a spotter until it's second nature.

Finally, invest in a good mattress.

If you decide to go down the microdiscectomy route and have any questions just ask. That's exactly what I eventually had done on the l4/l5. It was also my last resort. I had already gone through 9 months or so of treatments and increasing pain. I was also pretty severely depressed during the end of this period although I didn't realize that until afterward. The combination of being pretty much housebound for most of a year, the pain, not being able to sleep for more than 2-3 hours at a time, and the drug combinations pretty much messed up my head.

Started physiotherapy a couple of weeks ago and there's been a noticeable improvement. I've been given one specific exercise to do, a twisting aimed at pushing the partially-prolapsed L4/L5 disc back in a bit, and it seems to be helping.

I can now walk for about 1km, albeit very slowly, and I'm spending a lot less time hugging the floor. Still can't drive (too much codeine in me anyway) and still can't sit for more then 15-20 mins or so, but feeling a lot more positive about it all :)  Also hoping to be able to start swimming before long, start building up some of the ~5kg of weight I've lost in the last 2 months!

Feel better soon before you end up with wheels!  (http://www.tipsyturtle.net/forum/images/smilies/wheelchair.gif)

I'm a-lovin that smiley :D

 :geezer: (http://www.tipsyturtle.net/forum/images/smilies/wheelchair.gif)

Geezer Wars

Any with crutches?

(http://www.shredguitars.com/images/smilies/crutches.gif)

Ugh, badly done grey matte :/

So far I've put my back out getting washing out of our front loading washer/dryer and eating macaroni cheese seated in front of the coffee table.

 :geezer: (http://www.shredguitars.com/images/smilies/crutches.gif) (http://www.tipsyturtle.net/forum/images/smilies/wheelchair.gif)

Now we find a smiley with it's arm in a sling and we can be the cripple crowd!

36 here.. been dealing with it for about 6 years. 

Slight necro.

Been some slow improvement over the last 3 weeks, more mobile now, less pain, slowly reducing the painkiller intake. However, had a consult with a rheumatologist today about the possibility of a corticosteroid injection and she said that it was far too serious for that to be effective and has initiated a surgical consult. She said, whilst showing me the MRI pictures (very cool seeing inside your own body btw), that mine was one of the worst cases she's ever seen  :sad:

I'm pretty knocked back by this tbh, I was hoping that things were getting better and she'd say something like "yay physio is working, have a steroid injection and let's start working on proper recovery" but instead I've got another 4-6 week wait to see yet another consultant and then probably joining a fuck-knows-how-long waiting list for surgery.

The boredom and frustration are really starting to get me down now, plus I still can't work or drive and my college course work is falling way behind. Fucking bah tbh.

Would I be wrong to think that most people with lower back pain don't exercise regularly and/or are fat?

Don't know about most. My mother is in decent shape for a 60yr old lady, and she's mostly upset by her back/hip/knee stuff because she is /supposed to/ (not "will", of course) cut back on shovelling snow and raking leaves.

She's kinda in your boat, just got an MRI she needs to consult with the doctor next week. She's been dealing with little mobility and a lot of pain for months now and nobody has come up with any way of stopping it. She's WAY more laid back about it than I would be. The person she spoke with yesterday said she should probably go to an ortho, so she's almost to the point of getting to the specialist recommended by the emergency room doctor during the summer.

Athletic injuries or even a twist in the wrong direction by someone perfectly in shape can result in this. Fat folk can have pain all up and down their back. I've been the victim of both types of pain.

Not exercising regularly really has little to do with it IMO, more like "never stretching" could result in more backpain than just not like, doing cardio or something.

While both of those things are indeed risk factors for lower back pain they are not the only ones. I do (did) a fair amount of exercise in that I regularly did yoga (harder work than most people think) and had a very physically demanding job. Also I am skinny as fuck, and am even skinnier now (weighed 72kg, now weigh 65kg after 3 months immobile).

The main risk factors are bad posture and extended periods of inactivity, i.e. sitting in a crap chair without moving for several hours every day. And as Schild said, acute injuries to your back can be the start of it all. I fell over and twisted while carrying a heavy cabinet 6 years ago and that was the start of it all for me. Not doing anything about it and sitting on my arse playing games for hours every day finished the job.

Rather than make a new thread, I could just repeat the first post verbatim.

34 and on Monday I threw my lower back lifting Elena.

Fuck me, it's been 3 days of absolute agony.  There's nowt worse than wincing in pain when you breathe in.  Because it's really something you shouldn't stop.

Sigh.

Hot baths help, but the wife won't let me get nubile 18 year olds around to wash me down.

Shit man, sorry to hear that. Especially the nubile 18 year olds bit. They should be available on the NHS I think.

Seriously though, you been to see anyone about it? Get some tramadol in ya asap - it's not a pleasant drug but the kind of agony I know you're in is considerably less pleasant. Also, my experience has been that you need to be proactive about getting something done about it. Push for an MRI and a surgical/rheumatological consult as soon as you can!

And be *very* careful about any kind of exercise for now, some of the back-strengthening preventative exercises recommended can make things much worse in the wrong situations. Best of luck with it, seriously.

I threw my back out one day picking something up in Arizona and ended up crawling back onto my bed. It sucks giant, giant ass.

What was it? A hooker? Typhoid? Enquiring minds want to know.

I think it was a videogame or something. It wasn't like something heavy, I just turned my back the wrong way. :|

This must be the week for it.  I threw my back out last Saturday picking up a super-light aluminum chair, and my roommate through his out while we were visiting his family.

Egads!  Not for me.  I'll take the pain over tramadol again.  The stuff made me feel like absolute shit, and the withdrawl was even worse.

The only pain management I've had has been varieties of Percocet - which is fucking awesome.

Yeah I've been on co-codamol pretty much constantly for 4 months now, which is more or less Percocet - paracetamol (acetaminophen) and codeine, whereas Percocet is paracetamol and oxycodone, which I think is slightly stronger than codeine. I'm on about half my prescribed daily dose now but the improvements that I've been putting down to the physiotherapy seem to have plateaued, hence the surgical consult soon.

The tramadol is a LOT more powerful for severe pain though, and as you say Lantyssa, is unpleasant stuff. I only used it for the first 2 weeks because the pain was literally unbearable, and then once or twice since when it's got to the OMGkillmeNOW stage.

Sorry to hear you've put your back out too :(  Too many people here with fucked backs! Hmm.. gaming forum.. bad backs... could there be some kind of correlation?  :uhrr:

Spinal steroid injection on Monday. They sent me a nice couple of pages outlining the possible fuckups that can happen but nowhere in it did it mention the possibility of being turned into a superhuman spinal mutant ninja :x

Also, was told it would be an 18 week wait for a surgical consult on the NHS  :uhrr:  So I've booked a private consultation, which will cost £200 but it's happening in 10 days time instead of 4 fucking months.

About nine months ago I decided to stop being a semi fat fuck (SFF), bought a heavy bag to set up in my basement, and now I go down and beat the fuck out of it every day for 20 or 30 minutes.  Kickboxing.  I used to have chronic but mild back pain from doing nothing more than sleeping in my overweight body every day.  Let me tell you, kickboxing (a surprisingly effective form of exercise, btw) has cured that right up (along with weight loss).  I think I would have to fall off a house to hurt my back.

Fake edit:  I do realize there are other forms of back issues, so I'm not trying to undermine or make light of those issues.

Exercise and being tone is really a great defensive mechanism. I've heard about people getting fucked up falling off a roof, and I kinda scratch my head. I've fallen off a LOT of roofs, whether shoveling snow in the winter or just fucking around. Never been hurt. I guess knowing how to fall properly helps. I was rock-hopping once and fell with my fiancee watching, she got a kick out of it because I ended up falling about twenty times in ten seconds, before I actually "landed". Even though I'm not in the shape I was in ten years ago (peak of my genetic limitations), it's still nice to walk away uninjured from something that would break bones on a lot of folks.

Getting old is going to be a bitch, though. I've always been nigh-bulletproof from injuries, only broke my pelvis once when a log fell across me on some blacktop. After a ten plus foot fall, landing on aforementioned blacktop on my forehead, for no injury. Don't practice swordfighting on top of the monkey bars, kids. (Though to be fair, I didn't fall so much as the monkey bar broke!).

Oh no doubt that not enough (any) exercise was a major factor in my disc going POP. Pretty much my only goal right now is to get fit, once I'm capable of starting that recovery. I'm 40 in 7 months time and I am now determined to the point of obsession with not entering my 4th decade as a 65kg crippled weakling.

Schild asked me the other day how I sleep, and my answer was on my left side, badly and in short snatches (no cheap pussy jokes! You know who you are!) between codeine & valium doses. However, we've just discovered, by accidentally leaving the bedroom heater on one night, that the room being too fucking cold was making that a lot more difficult.

Kept the bedroom heater on all night for the last 4 nights and I have slept better than I have done for 4 months! So just something for any of the rest of you with fucked backs etc to try. Of course it may only be us weird brits that are conditioned to sleep in freezing rooms, YMMV  :awesome_for_real:

So, had steroid injection last week, injected at the coccyx area to flood the region since two nerves are being compressed. Two days of almost zero pain after that because of the local anesthetic they injected with it, and then back to the usual. Will take a few weeks to have any effect though apparently but all of the medical professionals I've seen have said that it's unlikely to make any major difference because of the severity of my case.

Also had a surgical consult this week. Didn't tell us anything new, just went over the possible risks of the surgery. He said he'd probably have to remove a small piece of bone in order to get all the disc material out and that there's about a 5-8% chance of complications that would leave me worse off than I am now. Scary stuff. Also, thanks to our wonderful neoliberalised NHS, it's a 4 month wait for the surgery unless we can find £8000 to pay for it privately. Yay.

Current plan then is to get me as fit as possible over the next 4 months. Ordered an elliptical cross-trainer (only exercise except swimming that I can do according to my physiotherapist, and I can't drive to the local swimming pool), giving up smoking next week (run out of grass anyway). If we happen to find £8k down the back of the sofa in the meantime then we'll go ahead with the private treatment, but that's kinda unlikely  :uhrr:

This is like my sister.  If she had those shots way earlier she might have avoided having back surgery.  The recovery period was long and rather hellish.  Having said that, it worked.  The horrible pain her  damaged discs were causing is gone.  She still has some back issues but not related to that and a teeny weeny fraction of the pain she used to have and it's not a constant thing anymore.  We have the classic runs in the family sort of back problems.  My father, his sister and brothers, my sister, even her son gets twinges and he's only in his 20s.   

Bummer Signe :(  Glad the surgery worked for her though. It does seem to me that they decide to treat these things way too late. If I'd been put on the surgical waiting list right after they saw the Rorschach blot in my MRI then I'd only have another month to wait instead of four.

And there's a familial link for me too - my dad had pretty much the *exact* same problem about 8 years ago. He had to wait over a YEAR for surgery though, which is just batshit fucking insane.

So, surgery tomorrow. Costing us ~ £8000 (impossible to get an actual quote from these fuckers) but relatives are helping with the cost. My physio and a couple of the consultants I'd seen had intimated that another 4 month wait for surgery would significantly increase my risk of developing permanent nerve damage so we've just gone private.

Having a hemiotomy and a decompression, which basically seems to involve drilling a chunk of spine off so they can get at the insides, cutting the protruding bits off of the prolapsed disc and then fishing all the bits of ruptured disc out and away from the sciatic nerves. There's a few things that can go wrong but all in all a complete success is about 80% likely. About a 5-8% chance of serious failure but I'm trying not to think about that  :uhrr:

Hopefully I'll be out of hospital by Wednesday and hopefully I'll finally be free of all this pain!  :awesome_for_real:

You are a braver man than I.

Good luck, sir  :-)

I can't even imagine the pain, but I hope it relieves you of all of that bullshit. 5-8% failure sounds pretty damn good!

We don't know what Failure means. Is it like rolling a zero or is it like just not doing any damage. >_>

Failure in this case means worse than I am now. Small (very small) possibility of permanent incontinence and impotence and inability to use my leg ever again. But that's really, really worst case scenario. Like 1:10,000 chance. And of course there's a similarly tiny chance that I'll just die under general anaesthetic, but worrying about those kind of tiny chances is like being scared of crossing the road and being hit by meteorites.

Most of the 5-8% is made up of varying degrees of nerve damage which would mean continued pain and further operations. AFAIK. Not an expert and this is just what I've been able to glean from Q&A's with assorted surgeons etc.

Good luck!   :heart:  I'm very nearly almost positively sure you will be perfectly fine without having to worry about squirting the wrong stuff and AT the wrong time. 

Geez.  Can't some mod just go and fix my posts?  I think you all enjoy it when I screw them up.  Lazy fuckers.

Edit by Trippy: yes we are

Good luck, apocrypha.

Good luck!

Thankyou folks  :heart:  Back in a few days  :awesome_for_real:

We'll all be here waiting for you. Get well.

Thinking good thoughts for ya apoc.

I opened this thread to bitch about my aching back, but quickly realized that I was effectively crying about a hangnail compared to a severed thumb, so I will just STFU. Also, Vicodin is magic stuff. My wife had a few left over from her postpartum recovery, and I helped myself to one. Wow.

Good luck!

From someone that's had major back surgery: good luck.  Hope your stay is shorter than mine was. Was not fun.

Fuck. Good luck man. Hope it goes/went well.  :ye_gods:

OMG! Drink a boat load of water and bulk up on fiber.  If you are not used to narcotics, the opium induced constipation is hell!  They work great to get rid of the pain, but then you're screaming in the bathroom later on in the week.

Oh and good luck apocrypha!

I'd wish you good luck but you've already had it done or else you wouldn't be reading this.

So speedy recovery and welcome back!

Thankyou everyone  :heart:

2nd attempt at replying - first reply got eaten by Firefox while the morphine-induced constipation that Jimbo alluded to ended suddenly and urgently! TMI I know, sorry!  :awesome_for_real:

Anyway, I'm home, I'm alive and the 6 months of leg pain seems to be 90% gone! Woohoo! Still some numbness down there but that's to be expected and it'll be a couple of weeks at least until we're certain how it went, but early indications are awesome.

Wish I'd read your post before I went in Jimbo, cos you were bang on! They gave me a fair amount of morphine, about 200mg over 24 hours I think (from a glance at my notes) and it did everything you said it would, plus crashed my BP quite impressively. Went down to under 80/something for quite a long time so they had me on constant monitoring and a drip until it came back up over 100.

Got a tiny little wound in my back and a huge bald patch on my leg from the electrosurgery and a really sore epiglottis from being intubated. But I can walk! I can sit (for short periods)! And I had a long, detailed conversation with a young hot physiotherapist girl about what kind of sex I could indulge in  :drill:

I think I've got a slow, gentle recovery ahead of me but right now I feel fucking awesome and indescribably happy that the pain is gone  :awesome_for_real:

Oh and general anaesthetics are weird! My brother had one about 6 weeks ago for a shoulder injury fixing and when he came out of it he was shouting and angry (his teacher mode kicking in). When I came round from mine I was all emotional and tearful! Heads and drugs are funny  :why_so_serious:

Thankyou all again for the happy thoughts & wishes  :heart:

Good for you, Apoc. So glad you acted on it and everything went well.

My mother is still just being a trooper and living with the pain. She's so damned stubborn.

Did you get the PT chick's digits?  :drill:

Yay Apoc! As someone who had an close relative go through this, I know how freakin scary it can be, so I'm glad you weathered it without too much emotional trauma.

Sky, show your mom this thread already.

Grats!

No but i'll look her up on StalkerBook later  :drill:

That didn't sound so bad pffft.  Glad everything went well.

Oh noooes. I woke up this morning with ze back pain. :(

The first thing I did was request a new chair for my job.

If you end up going to to doctor and don't use your entire prescription of pain medication, I offer a low cost Vicodin disposal service. All you need to do is pay for the shipping.

Good to hear it all turned out well. :)

Guys, if you're getting back pain please please please look into it. Really, if I'd looked into mine years ago it would have saved me from all this.

And today I have a big ulcer on my epiglottis and raging diarrhea as a result of intubation and all the morphine respectively. Still better than the leg pain  :awesome_for_real:

They didn't make you take a swiffer beforehand?  (Lucky if so.  I still reflexively gag when thinking about the taste.)

I have a personal chiropracter that I see. Thankfully he is accessible enough that I will see him in the next day or two.

But let me tell you: Last night I slept in the most correct position possible and learned to relax my body. The experience was a bit amazing, trying to self-induce myself to stop stressing about things and to relax.

What's a swiffer? I seem to remember the nurse giving me the midnight buttock morphine shot saying something about including something else in it to counteract the nausea but I was a bit out of it...

Pre-sleep meditation, and meditation in general, is an amazing boon that a lot of people either don't know about or don't partake in. I highly recommend it.

Must ... resist... urge... to... comment... on... chiropractors...  :ye_gods:

The most foul tasting gunk imaginable meant to empty your bowls prior to a surgery.

I only managed to down half the bottle.  Attempts at the rest were forcibly rejected by my body convulsing and gagging.  That was two years ago.  I've gagged twice from thinking about it while writing this up.

They crack me up!  (http://www.realitybbqforums.com/images/smilies/tease.gif)

You really shouldn't resist.

Let the hate flow forth. I used to be neighbors with a chiropractor, listening to him ramble on about how we wouldn't be seeing these increases in cancer rates if only people got adjusted more is one of the few times I've been angry enough to launch into a full screaming rant in someones face.

Well everything he's told me is pretty sane, the price is fair, his wife does massage therapy on the side that is cheaper than most places I've been, and my company trusts him enough to have him come on site, so I'd love to hear the stories but I'm still going to go see this guy for my back trouble. :)

How about that DO's, physical therapist, and even massage therapist do the same work and are using a scientific cause and effect to see what works and doesn't on there processes.  Or that the Chiropractors long thought that vaccine's were not working, since the disease process stems from an out-of-kilter spine.

Plus I've had to deal with one to many parents and patients who claim the chiropractor saved their lives, but want my drugs still.

Ah no, none of that thankfully! My surgery did end up being delayed by about 6 hours though so the supposed 10 hours fasting turned into 16 hours - including liquids ffs! They let me have the occasional tiny sip of water while I was waiting in a 26oC hospital room but man was I dehydrated to fuck.

And Jimbo managed to say most of what I would have said about chiropractors already. Chiropractice is alternative medicine. I.e. it's not based upon scientific evidence. If it works for you then fine, but it's likely placebo effect, regression to the mean (i.e. things tend to get better by themselves anyway) or happenstance that they did something useful. Given that it's not evidence based and scientifically rigorous it's also potentially risky because there's nothing to stop it's practitioners doing harmful things.