Back pain

I had chronic back pain for over a year. At the time I was riding a desk 12 hours/day, under a lot of stress at work, and not doing much else to be active. I started doing situps because my doctor suggested it as the first thing to try. Damned if that **** didn't work! Took a while, but my back has never twinged a bit since then, except for the occasional overexertion from time to time.
 
If one can ignore it or make it go away with exercise, that wasn't pain to begin with, that was just sore. Pain is when the nerve is compressed and it feels like someone ran a welding wire from your spine to the end of an extremity and started welding.
 
Henning said:
If one can ignore it or make it go away with exercise, that wasn't pain to begin with, that was just sore. Pain is when the nerve is compressed and it feels like someone ran a welding wire from your spine to the end of an extremity and started welding.
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Over a year of my back being "sore", sometimes to the point where it would affect my ability to get up or do any kind of activity qualifies in my layman's book as pain. :dunno:
 
Rigged4Flight said:
Over a year of my back being "sore", sometimes to the point where it would affect my ability to get up or do any kind of activity qualifies in my layman's book as pain. :dunno:
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Wait till you blow out a disk and get severe nerve pain....
 
Henning said:
Wait till you blow out a disk and get severe nerve pain....
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Oh I don't discount the fact that there are much more severe ways for the back to hurt. TS didn't mention what was causing his pain. But before we go in with scalpel and start fusing vertebrae and stuff, I would suggest a trip to the doctor and maybe some stomach strengthening exercises to start. :dunno:

Worked for me. Except for my bone spur. Nothing to do for that except operate. :yikes:
 
Tom-D said:
anyone coping besides me?

How?
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Every day. Even after a disk replacement. Some days its sore , other days it throbs and the worse days are the spasms.

With the exceptions of the spasms , usually a hot shower ,some Alieve I'm good. The days with the bad spasms , get home from work , take a muscle relaxer , hit a hot shower to get blood flowing and drool all night long in a great sleep.

I'm climbing ladders , telephones poles , in crawl spaces and attics all day long. I try to get some good stretches in prior to pulling my ladder off the truck or contorting into a confined space .
 
I have intermittent back pain. My wife has had a bad back her whole life.

I found that losing weight and doing a lot of exercises, especially core exercises helped.

My wife's back was always too sore to do those exercises. And she always thought of chiropractors as quacks. But a few years ago her back got so bad she couldn't walk for over a week. A friend talked her into going to a chiropractor and after a few sessions she was quite a bit better. The chiropractor insisted she start core exercises. She started slow but kept it up. She almost never has back pains any more. She goes to the chiropractor about once a month and swears by it. One thing the chiropractor told her was that it took years for her back to get in that condition. She couldn't expect to fix it in a few months with exercise and adjustments. For her, it will be a long term regimen.
 
I have degenerative disk disease. caused by old age. and over doing the lifting thing.

its been a hard work week, and I'm paying for it.
 
Tom-D said:
I have degenerative disk disease. caused by old age. and over doing the lifting thing.

its been a hard work week, and I'm paying for it.
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Sometimes, "better living through chemistry", really is.
There are a few instances where surgery can help, but I have heard too many stories of people getting back surgery and the only thing that was reduced was their bank account.
 
JOhnH said:
Sometimes, "better living through chemistry", really is.
There are a few instances where surgery can help, but I have heard too many stories of people getting back surgery and the only thing that was reduced was their bank account.
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To me surgery is not an option. when I get stuck and 1 or 2 vertebra don't move, I'll go to the chiropractor, and get moving again, but in the mean time I have muscle soreness and moving around is painful.
 
JOhnH said:
Sometimes, "better living through chemistry", really is.
There are a few instances where surgery can help, but I have heard too many stories of people getting back surgery and the only thing that was reduced was their bank account.
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I had nerve related soreness/spasms for about seven years before I was operated on. It wasn't a disabling problem, but was very annoying and sometimes limiting. The docs couldn't find anything dramatic. I knew several people who had had fusions with poor results; they simply let the docs go in without a clear idea of what was wrong. I waited until the problem was obvious. The surgery was successful.
 
Tom-D said:
I have degenerative disk disease.

its been a hard work week, and I'm paying for it.
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I have the same and have been on a regimen of one hydrocodone when I wake up and 2 muscle relaxers (can't recall the name right now) 3x/day for almost two years. This regimen has worked great at keeping pain at an acceptable level since the series of epidural shots. My back doc and I are postponing surgery as long as possible.
 
Tom-D said:
I have degenerative disk disease. caused by old age. and over doing the lifting thing.

its been a hard work week, and I'm paying for it.
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oof. I with draw my earlier advice. :sad:
 
Email me offline TD, if you desire. This is what I used to do, FULL TIME, until the end of 2010. BC
 
I have very minor scoliosis in my extreme lower back and did some minor damage throwing bags for Continental.

If I don't do stretching exercises every night, and force myself to do core exercises once in a while, I'll pay for it. It'll get worse as I get older.

It also helps a lot if I don't slouch or get so engrossed at a computer workstation at work that I don't move for a few hours straight. That'll make me pay for it, too.

But I've got it good compared to a whole lot of folks. Lots of folks. No complaints.

One time I was all locked up and sore and it was a friend's wedding day. There was a long break between the long Catholic service and the evening reception, and the Best Man and I snuck off to his house/garage to finish re-installing the racing seat in his race car becaus he had a race on Sundaynand needed a hand.

No major problems getting it in, and at one point he asked for a socket wrench on the passenger side of the car I was on. I turned around to grab it and as I went to hand it to him I misjudged the height of the lowered car roof and put my head into it at full speed reaching in to hand it to him.

Craaaaaaaack... Every single vertebrae from top of my neck to the bottom of my spine.

I just stood there holding my head with a mixture of "owwww!" for my head and "ahhhhhhh!" for my back. I didn't know whether it hurt or it felt great! Haha.

Friend wondered if I'd knocked myself silly. I explained that his race car was the best Chiropractor I'd ever been to, but it had a horrible side effect of giving me a headache during treatments. ;)

Made for a nice wedding reception that night, even Karen noticed I wasn't wincing when I moved anymore and asked if something was different or if I'd finally given up and downed an Ibuprofen or something. :)
 
I broke my mid back when I was 8 and then when I was in my 20's I did something to my lower back and started to lose the feeling in my legs. The doctors said that they could not operate for some reason. I've regained all the feeling in my legs, but still have streaks of pain. My whole life has been a search for back pain relieve.

I strangest thing that really works for me is riding my bike, don't know why.
 
I fought it for years, finally had back surgery, wish I had done it years ago. It was great. I lived on Tylenol liquid gels 4, 3 times a day with meals plus you need to be as thin and fit as possible. Now I feel great, no problems at all. You will miss 3 to 4 months of flying at the most.
 
Taggg said:
I fought it for years, finally had back surgery, wish I had done it years ago. It was great. I lived on Tylenol liquid gels 4, 3 times a day with meals plus you need to be as thin and fit as possible. Now I feel great, no problems at all. You will miss 3 to 4 months of flying at the most.
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I don't take or require pain meds beyond over the counter stuff, and don't take anything if I'm flying.
 
The muscle relaxer I am on is methocarbamol. I was on flexeril but it was impossible to stay awake.
 
Torn disk L5-L6. Beginning arthritis L2&3. Three epidural steroid injections, excercise, and learning what I can't do anymore. At least I can sleep now. OTC when it hurts.
 
Second trip to the Chiropractor last night, no more pain, no more meds, felt so good I went flying today just for fun.
 
ejensen said:
Torn disk L5-L6. Beginning arthritis L2&3. Three epidural steroid injections, excercise, and learning what I can't do anymore. At least I can sleep now. OTC when it hurts.
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There is no L6. After L5 comes S1, the first sacral vertebra. You can have a lumbarized S1, but it is still called S1.

There are some classic studies that showed around 30% of the population had so called bulging disks, with absolutely no back pain. So bulging disks alone do not necessarily equate with pathology or pain.
 
AcroBoy said:
There is no L6. After L5 comes S1, the first sacral vertebra. You can have a lumbarized S1, but it is still called S1.

There are some classic studies that showed around 30% of the population had so called bulging disks, with absolutely no back pain. So bulging disks alone do not necessarily equate with pathology or pain.
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Whatever, Guess I remembered wrong. Sorry about that not the doc. It wasn't just bullging it was/is torn and leaking..
 
I recall a safety seminar about back injuries we were all required to attend in grad school. The only absentee was my pal Augusto, who was out with a bad back.

Mrs. Steingar is suffering right now. Her back is in truly horrible condition. She's had back problems all throughout our marriage, poor thing. Bad enough to be saddled with me.
 
My wife has degenerative disc disease. She has had five surgeries and has five vertebrae fused in her lower back and three fused in her neck. Since the surgeries she has been doing much better but I always worry about her going downhill some more.
 
EppyGA said:
My wife has degenerative disc disease. She has had five surgeries and has five vertebrae fused in her lower back and three fused in her neck. Since the surgeries she has been doing much better but I always worry about her going downhill some more.
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Sorry to hear. After seeing a recent MRI of Mrs. Steingar's lower back I'm surprised she's upright (as was the neurosurgeon). I have no doubt at all there is major surgery in her future. That was the end of her big rides on the Goldwing motorcycle.
 
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