MarketWatch ran an article today that hit close to home:
“Stop Spending Thousands Of Dollars On Back Pain Surgery and Treatment That Won’t Work“
This might be one of the first articles I remember from this site that is accurate. Anyway, I have my share of expertise in the area of chronic back pain so I thought I’d take a moment to share. Two years ago I suffered an injury that caused a disc bulge in my lower back. Although I don’t know exactly when it happened, it was somewhere between squatting too heavy, sprints when I hadn’t stretched adequately, or trying to be He-Man in the overhead press.
For whatever reason, I have always trained like an NFL team might call me to participate in training camp, despite not playing a down of college football. I took everything in life to the extreme, including attempting to lift the same weights that people twice my size did.
The problem with this is that when you don’t have the frame to support that kind of repeated beating, you end up injuring yourself. And that I did.
The pain was slow onset. It didn’t happen all at once but I remember one weekend being at the gym and telling my lifting partner that my lower back and left asscheek hurt. I had a literal pain in the ass. As the weeks progressed I tried to fight through the pain. I kept the same workout regimen thinking it was a minor issue that would probably sort itself out. Not the case. So that I keep this relatively brief here is an outline of how the pain progressed:
1. Lower back tightness and pain in left asscheek.
2. Lower back hurts to the point I can’t tie my shoes.
3. Lower back pain continues and left hamstring has sharp shooting pains.
4. Lower back pain continues and my left leg is mostly numb / feels as though I am being stung by bees.
5. FML
When I went from 3-5 on the scale above I finally decided to seek professional help. I started with a Chiropractor that came recommended by my gym. I’d visited Chiropractors in the past with success so I figured I would suck it up and let someone help me.
After using up the standard 25 visits per year allowed by my insurance, I had improved from the FML back to stage 3. Tired of taking time out of my day and being out of insurance covered visits, I stopped going. I went back to the gym and started searching YouTube for videos on lower back pain, sciatic pain, and stretches and lifts to improve the problem.
After about a week of trying this, things got worse. I was at the point where I couldn’t and didn’t want to get out of bed. Being asleep was the only time of the day I wasn’t in intense pain. After talking with my insurance company, they let me know that I had visits left to go see a Physical Therapist. They said chances are I’d need back surgery because nothing they were trying was working. Great.
By this point I was miserable. I don’t just mean from pain, I mean miserable to be around, miserable in everyday life. Getting out of bed was a chore and being in constant pain changes you. I stopped going out with friends, traded like shit, stopped working out which pissed me off further and took on a “woe is me” attitude I never had before. Nothing was going right in life and being a 9.5/10 on the pain scale every waking hour wasn’t helping.
Finally, I scheduled an appointment with my family Physician. He sent me in for an MRI which confirmed a herniated disc and I was rescheduled for a treatment plan. I’ve had the same family doc since college who noticed a change in my temperament. I remember him saying that he always enjoyed seeing me as I was always in a good mood even when I was sick. Not anymore. My mental state had deteriorated from months of prolonged pain.
Because I hadn’t been through any long term injuries in the past, I wasn’t aware the effect that prolonged stress and pain had on your psyche and central nervous system. I think when you are in that state, you don’t even notice it, and I didn’t. I wasn’t fun to be around, and there was no joy left in anything. Every ounce of energy I had was spent trying to fight through the day in pain. The over the counter and prescription inflammation meds I was taking got to be addictive. I don’t mean addictive in that I loved the feeling they gave me, I mean I needed at minimum twice the recommended amount to keep the pain at bay. I distinctly remember getting sick and throwing up blood one Saturday night. I had stayed home electing to lay on a heating pad instead of going out with a group of friends. I later learned the doses of inflammation drugs I was taking was wreaking havoc on my stomach lining.
A thought crossed my mind that night that never had before:
“If this is what life is like for me now, I ain’t stickin’ around for this bullshit.”
That is not meant to be an over dramatization. That is what the pain had done to me. That paired with the fact that with back problems, there is never a simple answer. You might seek every form of rehab out there and find that nothing works. So where are you left?
The sheer number of people suffering from this I’ve come to find out is staggering.
Bring up that you have had back pain to 10 strangers in a room and odds are at least 5 of them over the age of 30 have had some form of back pain in their lives. What’s more, ask how they recovered and most of them won’t have an answer. Some will probably range from, ” I think it just kind of went away to I had spinal surgery.”
Nothing is guaranteed to work.
WebMD lists the following treatments as “possibly helpful:”
If I can lend any sort of a hand here it might be to tell you what worked for me. It wasn’t one thing but a mixture of the following:
A. 2 rounds of Prednisone
B. A shitload of trips to a Chiropractor that treated professional athletes.
C. Inversion
D. Hip Abductor and Adductor strengthening exercises along with hamstring exercises. (Years of squats and sprints left me with a large ass and quads and weak hamstrings and psoas muscles apparently causing a muscle imbalance)
E. This book:
The main advice I would give is to find a support group. Not kidding here. There are online chat support groups where you can commiserate with other pain pain sufferers and work together on what sorts of treatments people are having luck with. Don’t underestimate the power of talking to someone when you are in agony. Even if no two people and treatment plans are the same, misery loves company.
Hopefully this article finds someone one day and saves them a step or two in their healing process.
In most of my articles I try and help you make money, in this one I hope to help you save some.
OC