SPINES ARE EVIL!
Feeling pretty blah due to colossal amounts of back pain.
The actual issue with my back is that I have a bunch of vertebrae near the bottom that don't move properly because of arthritis. My spine's been dodgy since I was a teenager because I have a minor scoliosis near the top of it - nothing terribly serious, but it's affected how the vertebrae can move and I'm a lazy git who doesn't bother to do her physiotherapy exercises unless she's in screaming agony. The scoliosis bugs me mostly because without it, I'd be 2-3 inches taller, which is a lot at my height - it makes the difference between being "bloody short" and just "short" :)
The part of the spine at the bottom, the sacrum, is fused together by design, but there should still be movement between it and the various other bones there - hip joints and so on. Mine's been inflamed and not moving properly, probably for years. I had physiotherapy for a while, which was really helping, but had to stop when I developed a strange weird numb patch in my left thigh. That's been there for many months but has been vaguely under control with gabapentin.
So i went to hospital on Saturday and they injected steroids into the facet joints between the inflamed vertebrae. It's not as hardcore as "needles in the spine" make it sound, but it's scary because it has to be done under X-ray to ensure they hit the right place, and if you have a medical phobia and an anxiety disorder, you tend to catastrophise and imagine everything that could possibly go wrong. Anyway. It was fine.
Except that now I seem to have more movement, and my muscles are hurting like hell. The right side of that area is hurting, and the pain has always been on the left or in the centre before. Maybe they managed to fix the pain in the left of my back by moving it to the right side instead? Ha, no. It's far more likely that I have more movement than I've had for ages, and the muscles around my spine are complaining because they're not used to it.
But it's distracting as hell. I was trying to get on with PhD work yesterday and couldn't due to general wooziness and fatigue. Today my neck and the middle of my back hurts, and I can't get comfortable in any position at all - not even in my £800 orthopedic chair. Also, the numb patch in my thigh has returned and is really bothering me. I clearly need to start doing those exercises again, as well as getting referred back to physiotherapy.
Bah.
The actual issue with my back is that I have a bunch of vertebrae near the bottom that don't move properly because of arthritis. My spine's been dodgy since I was a teenager because I have a minor scoliosis near the top of it - nothing terribly serious, but it's affected how the vertebrae can move and I'm a lazy git who doesn't bother to do her physiotherapy exercises unless she's in screaming agony. The scoliosis bugs me mostly because without it, I'd be 2-3 inches taller, which is a lot at my height - it makes the difference between being "bloody short" and just "short" :)
The part of the spine at the bottom, the sacrum, is fused together by design, but there should still be movement between it and the various other bones there - hip joints and so on. Mine's been inflamed and not moving properly, probably for years. I had physiotherapy for a while, which was really helping, but had to stop when I developed a strange weird numb patch in my left thigh. That's been there for many months but has been vaguely under control with gabapentin.
So i went to hospital on Saturday and they injected steroids into the facet joints between the inflamed vertebrae. It's not as hardcore as "needles in the spine" make it sound, but it's scary because it has to be done under X-ray to ensure they hit the right place, and if you have a medical phobia and an anxiety disorder, you tend to catastrophise and imagine everything that could possibly go wrong. Anyway. It was fine.
Except that now I seem to have more movement, and my muscles are hurting like hell. The right side of that area is hurting, and the pain has always been on the left or in the centre before. Maybe they managed to fix the pain in the left of my back by moving it to the right side instead? Ha, no. It's far more likely that I have more movement than I've had for ages, and the muscles around my spine are complaining because they're not used to it.
But it's distracting as hell. I was trying to get on with PhD work yesterday and couldn't due to general wooziness and fatigue. Today my neck and the middle of my back hurts, and I can't get comfortable in any position at all - not even in my £800 orthopedic chair. Also, the numb patch in my thigh has returned and is really bothering me. I clearly need to start doing those exercises again, as well as getting referred back to physiotherapy.
Bah.