Re: Severe back/leg pain continuing--advice?

Old Goat:

Thanks for keeping in touch here.

WOW, I reread my note to you and some of the sentences are rather strange.
That's what happens when I am lying down and barely able to see the
keyboard.

Mel
"OldGoat" <oldgoatmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:S51Qh.2517$IY4.81@xxxxxxxxxxx
Dear Mel,

It feels more like a high wire act, walking the edge between adequacy and
pain, both chemically and physically. The chemical part is self evident,
but if you move the wrong way physically...BAM!- spend the rest of the
week laid up. Not a real quality of life, but sometimes the "pickins" are
slim, and you take the best you can. If it goes chronic, it will really
test your ability to accept the new, fragile body you're stuck with. It's
not easy for a tough guy to admit defeat over a few little jelly filled
sacs in the back.
Rest and PT are kind of a hard choice, especially if you're pretty much in
the same straights 6 months on. I'd say rest is as important, even if you
need chemicals to achieve it, you've got to get decent rest and
relaxation. PT not so much for pain reduction or strengthing muscles, but
flexibility. That's the best thing to concentrate any physical activity
towards. If you do go chronic (which is usually safe to declare after
about 6 months or so. it varies with the problem and how much you have
done to cure and diagnose the problem) you will have to find some
retraining of the mind/body connection. IOW you have to think before you
move, where you could just move before. Smack the light switch with your
cane, rather than get up and flip it. Bending becomes complex, where it
was done without thinking before.
If it does become a permanent condition (gulp) you kind of have to accept
the best situation you can find, but not really settle for it. Believe
someday they will find some 50 cent cure that will make everything what it
was before all this started. It may not be realistic, but the things that
I have seen in here keep that thought burning in me. People do conquer
chronic back (and other kinds of) pain and leave this place and get their
lives back. It's an amazing thing to see. Someday...

Never give up--og



"MZB" <moo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1h%Ph.1184$%k3.762@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I am so grateful for your responses.
I see you all in your little prisons, going through merry gorounds try to
get proper stuff. What a game.

Needless to say, this is very scary stuff.
I am going to gut it through the next 3 days of work if possible and then
I have a 4-day break to get some rest.
BTW, I'm a mathematics Professor but I did have an English minor at my
undergraduate school (NYU) so I will expect poifekt Inglesh when you talk
to me.

I am really trying the complete bed rest. I posted on the sci.med board
and a neurosurgeon is pushing many many weeks of total bed rest because
this is such dangerous stuff and you don't want permanent damage.
However, I've read alsewhere that this not the best appoach. Even these
rested 2 days I spstiffer end them lying bed. Itmeans I'm stifer and leff
comfortable, But I walk for 3 minutes and the pain is back.BACK and
getting worse. I need to find via chemicals or P/t some way . Bed rest
for 3 weeks it would seem would an increase in overal debilitation. Your
thoughts?
I;m hoping to my doc in the morning and hupe to get schedule this
week,which will be hard.Yes, I do hope not to be a true member of your
group. I don't want this mto get chronic.
mb




"OldGoat" <oldgoatmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:lJZPh.2436$qE2.1745@xxxxxxxxxxx
Dear Mel,

I should have told you we may start out slow, but we go after somebody
like gangbusters, especially if we feel like we missed you the first
time.
You need a neurological work up, man. That "feeling like a funnybone" is
a dead give away. Forget the orthopedics. A lot of people may find it
different, but don't blow off nerve blocks and epidurals and other such
injections. The funny bone thing is a nerve plexus (like the wind
robbing solar plexus) which they just might be able to do something
with. See either a neurosurgeon or an anesthesiologist that does pain
control about getting those. Try at least 3 if you don't find them
terribly sucky(my wife would be smacking me in the head if she knew I
used "sucky" in a note to a college professor. With my luck English or
some literary specialty, to top it off). But the block can help with leg
pain, as well as a TENS unit, which is like a little walkman sized
electrical massage machine.That really simplifying the actions, but the
idea is to block the pain buzz going to the brain with it's little buzz
of electric current. The back pain is the worst for me and its been damn
near impossible to find real cure for even surgically, but those couple
things (injections were so/so,depending on what they were working on,
but you can't go wrong getting a TENS unit, you will find it works well
on many things) can really reduce the radiating leg pain. I have found
ways to reduce that (fallen asleep more than once with a tennis ball
under my ass) and hopefully you will too.
One thing I want to slide in here. I know you said Advil or Motrin (both
ibuprophen),tylenol or acetaminophen and Flexeril was the routine in the
past. You may end up changing that routine medicinally. Beware of
Tylenol and Advil types of drugs. Both of them, nearly every OTC pain
reliever, and many prescription drugs belong to a family known as NSAIDs
(Non-steroidal-anti-inflammatory drugs. Now you know why they call them
NSAID's.). This family of drugs is responsible for more deaths every
year than all the narcotics combined. It shows up as liver or kidney
failure in most cases and is just generally bad news for your GI tract.
Acetaminophen daily max is 4000mgs. Ibuprophen is 2400mgs per day. it
gets lower from there for all of them, even the Rx ones. Doctors don't
even know what they're doing with NSAID's, they exceed daily max doses,
will prescribe multiple medications full of the same NSAID, and keep
them on a patient much longer than is safe, in Tylenol's case 10 days.
Any Rx you get that says APAP on it is tylenol mixed with something. You
have to watch yourself, but you have to watch the doctors too.
Now for my disclaimer: I'm warning you that I believe very strongly in
pain drugs for treating pain. That means a pro narcotics bias. It shows
up a lot when I write in here. But I can always back up the talk with
documentation. So even if it sounds like I'm promoting better living
through chemistry(and I am for those with pain issues that nothing else
has helped), I speak what I know and know what I speak. I don't believe
in BS, which a few doctors have found out by trying to tell me tall
tales of the DEA. A display of frustration is not always out of line
when the exam room door is shut. Sometimes you need to make some noise
to get adequate pain control.
Hopefully you wont need any of the stuff in this post and you'll find
this was just an extended bout of a little sciatica, and a couple more
weeks of PT and heat, the weather breaking and the return of spring will
bring an end this issue. But if you end up getting more invasive than a
fresh MRI, we're open all hours, so make yourself at home.

Hope U R up and running again soon--og


"MZB" <moo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:BqyPh.68$fQ1.32@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I posted the message below but I only got one response (thanks Old
Goat). He indicated that others have similar problems. I'm hoping some
will respond. I don't see other newsgoups just devoted to back pain and
I guess I don't have a chronic condition yet, but I hope to get some
answers/suggestions.

In fact, let me also add:



The main problem is the leg pain. I am a college professor. I am
going in now, teaching 2 consecutive 2-hour classes (plus 1 office
hour) and
then going home and pretty much resting. This is 4 days a week. This
week,
my last workday will be Wednesday, so I will have 4 days to rest and I
am
resting this weekend.
What I am finding is the back pain has improved 70%
from its most acute phase but the leg pain is worse. It is horrible.
Yesterday, it started out okay and no problems teaching my first class
but
it just really deteriorated during the second class. We also had a
family
get-together/birthday celebration last night. It included dinner at a
restaurant. I just did that part and went home. It just gets so
fatiguing.
Should the leg pain go away as the back pain diminishes? So far, that's
not
the case at all.

I have an aversion to medications, but I do have flexeril and OTC
ibuprofin.
In the past it just seemed to mask the pain and the pain seemed to get
worse
than ever when the drugs wore off. I will have to take that again, I
guess.

Years ago, an MRI revealed I guess what you would call degenerative
disk disease. That is, the disk space was pretty much non-existent at 4
or 5
levels. But there was no leg pain and they said no evidence of stenosis
or
herniation. I eventually recovered fom that episode (back pain and
spasms).
This is very different the back pain is much lower (tailbone and pelvic
area).

Anyway, I am very frustrated. I guess this is more a vent than
anything, but
if anyone has any more ideas, I'm listening. The problem is right now I
would like to "work it out" but that doesn't work as any activity makes
it
worse.

So, I'm resting and I might do some simple exercises that the P/T
recommended although I am not sure she knows what she is doing. (She is
supposed to be decent but she seems so unsure of herself!). The
exercises
did seem to help with the back, but then the leg pain started and that
has
been the main problem. They are obviously related but it seems that
even
with the back pain diminished the leg pain gets worse.

I'll stop rambling now.
My original post to this board follows:


I recently started having severe back pain after shoveling snow/ice
(about 4
weeks ago).

Since Saturday, the pain has gone into my left leg -- pretty severe.

P/T seems to think it might well be nerve root pain and so far P/T is
not
helping.

Question: once back pain also turns into leg pain, does this mean it
won't
go away via therapy?? Am I doomed to surgery (which I probably am not a
candidate for due to degenrative disk disease at a variety of levels)
or
injections or stronger stuff. Or are exerises still possible to relieve
the
back/leg pain. In the past, I've had lots of back pain problems but
usually
found the key to overcoming it (extra walking and/or exercise). I've
never
had the leg pain.

A final question: is there a newsgroup dedicated to back pain??? I
can't
seem to find one on my server. What about some kind of back pain forum
on
the internet?



Mel












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