Back Pain

[guitar_stitch]

For a few years now, I've had on-again, off-again back pain, usually in my lower back.  This time around, it hit me hard and left me laying face down in the dining room, unable to stand.  Everyone seems to think it's a pinched nerve due to a herniated disk.  I've had enough of this

Comments

[robzip]

Spondylolisthesis perhaps? It's the cause of most lower back pain ever since us mouth breathers decided to walk upright. Surgical fixes are available but highly inadvisable except in the most debilitating cases. Since yours seems to come and go, your doc will most likely suggest anti-inflammatory drugs and lower back strengthening exercises.
In my case, the L-5 vertebrae (first one above the pelvis) had shifted forward by almost half the width of the spinal column, pressing especially bad on the nerve bundle to the left leg. The sensation was a muscle spasm like pain in the left thigh, general weakness in the leg, painful walking and a pain in the hip joint like it was being forced apart with a screwdriver. Strange travelling pain depending on what I was doing.
Attempting to lay on my side would shift the cramping all the way down to my foot and cause spasm cramping in my toes!
Chiropractic adjustment (which I generally regard as one click above a witch doctor), anti-inflammatory drugs (Celebrex) and a little smart exercise to tighten up the area have kept it from bothering me for 10 years now.

[guitar_stitch]

You have pretty well described the pain sensations. Yes, that is also the initial suspicion with regard to the condition. MRIs still have to be done to fully confirm.

I never really thought about the hip/knee pains that I get from time to time, but it seems to make sense.

I'm hoping to avoid surgery, and it sounds like your case was pretty severe, so I should get off easy. Right now I'm on Tramadol for pain and Meloxicam for inflammation.

I'll keep you updated.

[robzip]

Actually my case is pretty mild. The amount of displacement in the vertebrae is startling to see in an X-ray though. The ones who really have it bad are those with degenerative bone crumbling and arthritic complications.
Meloxicam....ugh. My GI tract does not like that stuff at all. Naprosyn seems to be working since the insurance balks at the price of Celebrex these days.
The pain you feel indeed can move around, greatly influenced by how you stand, sit, shoes you wear and what particular part of a nerve you might be aggravating at any given time. Some of it may not be severe enough or sharp enough to attribute to your back disorder but watch carefully how much of everything clears up when you improve your back health.
The variety of pain that was most exasperating for me was the cramping down into my lower leg and toes when laying dowm. It usually came with a sharp biting pain at mid shin level just to the outside of the front of the shin bone. Geez! What in the hell does one have THERE that could possibly get lit up like that?
One trick I found to help with L-5 displacement. Use of my porch railing as an ortho stretch tool. I would lock my feet under the bottom of the rail, then bend low over the top of the rail with my arms folded across my abdomen. I would stretch my torso upward while forcing my forearms backward into my abdomen, creating a lifting and 'reseating' of the L-5 rearward. My condition is the L-5 shifting forward and down causing a shear type pressure against the nerves.
Doc says the nerves there are a dirty grey color about the diameter of a pencil lead, can actually take quite a lot of abuse and still be functional. He warned that by the time they are compressed enough to flatten out like ribbons, pain and numbness would be constant companions and I would have a walk more akin to a shuffle. Too much info yet? :)