Back ache sufferers, commiserate with me

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ugh. This so sucks. My back “went out” yet again Saturday, and I’m cooped up trying to get it to heal itself for a road trip I’m going on, oh, tomorrow. Grrrreat.

My story starts back when I was a stupid, unthinking 15-year-old (sometimes redundant, T least in my case) and saw the other girls in my gym class doing front hand springs. Neat! I want to try! Nevermind I had no training whatsoever. Looked easy enough, right? Just run, dive to the floor and push off your hands, land on your feet? Piece of cake. Except that last part.

The brilliant part of this is I didn’t do it once or twice. I did it maybe a half dozen times, and because (I now know) I wasn’t arching my back enough, the curve of the arc wasn’t sufficient to let me land on my feet. Instead, I’d land on the back of my heels and be sent to the floor in a jarring tailbone-smash. Of course, I didn’t do it just that day, either. I kept doing it in my backyard, always trying for that elusive landing. For MONTHS. My back started to ache (shock) and progressively got worse, to where I spent two weeks of the next school year (told you it was long in the making!) in bed doped up on antiinflammatories and muscle relaxants. Nowadays such extended bedrest is not preferred, and certainly not without physical therapy. Why? Because, at least in my case, it resulted in scar tissue developing on the nerve. :mad: Stupid, stupid, stupid (me).

So here it is 15 years later, where a friggin’ pair of riding boots (not the most supportive on the feet) coupled with the bending and twisting of washing my horse have left me ouchie.

I really want to work out, but don’t know if I should. Maybe just something on the Stairmaster wouldn’t be bad? (Do y’all workout at all when your back freaks on you?)

In the past, my back has gone “out” (meaning, sudden, severe spasm that leaves me borderline immobile) when I’ve bent over–correctly at the knees, I might add–to pick up a quarter, sat down to tie my shoes, and turned to pick up a piece of trash off a chair.

Anyone with me and care to share their own back tale of woe (and ow)?

2

I guess you have allready tried physiotherapy, for me that was the least helpful thing for my back pain, I learnt exercises that I practiced religiously and after 6 months of physio I had an extremely strong and flexible back, but it still f’ing hurt.
You could try Alexander Technique (very good for poise), Accupuncture (my dad swear’s by it, the needles scare me too much), or a Chyropracter. All three of which are only border line looney so you wont have to give up your sceptics society membership to try them.
Or try any of the more crazy alternative healing methods, though of course they don’t work. Since if sticking a newt up each nostril once a week stops the pain for you, its damn worth while even if you look silly and are only fooling yourself.
Also find what environmental factors effect your back, and do what you can to counter tham. My back suffers in the cold, one of the reasons for me moving from UK to California. Though a heated pad could be just as good.
Cheers, Bippy

3

Bippy’s experience is the same as mine - I have a exceptionally strong, quite flexible and painful back.

They really can’t do much about the pain, so I concentrate on retaining function. There is a standard amount of back pain I must experience, so I choose to get it thru exercise and stretching so I can still walk.

In my case, I hurt my back doing exercises so I wouldn’t have a crippling bad back like my mother did and my father does. And the orthopedic surgeon says the fusion that my mother says cured her doesn’t really work very often.

I cannot suspend my disbelief enough to get the placebo effect of alternative medicine and chiropractic. And I don’t like pills.

Sorry for the unpleasantness you are having in your back. Also sorry I cannot reassure you that it will get better and stay that way.

Regards,
Shodan

4

Ruffian, I defintely feel your pain.
My back goes out just about every six months or so. And it’s never when I’m doing anything strenous either. I ride horses or do Tae-Bo for an hour and not feel a twinge of pain.
It’s always some little stupid thing that pulls it out of whack. Last time (this weekend, in fact), it went out on me because I twisted in a weird way trying to get my boot unstuck from about 4 inches of mud.
The time before that, it went out because I’d reached for a light switch in a way that apparently didn’t suit my back muscles.
I’ve never found anything that really works miracles–it usually has to run its course and I’m out of commision for 1-2 days.
However, I have found that alternating heat and cold (heating pad and ice pack) on that one spot on my lower back does wonders for the pain as long as I don’t try to get up and walk around.
Hope you find something that works for you and if you do, please share the knowledge because I’d love to know about it too!

5

Oh, kwitcherbellyachin. Try having spinal arthritis and having it hurt all the time. Pikers. Slackers.:slight_smile: I feel your pain.

6

Greywolf, there’s a few things I’ve learned about my back. One, shoes that somehow jar the small of my back can make it cranky enough that it’s poised for an “outtage.” These shoes aren’t uncomfortable on the feet or hard to walk in, but have some sort of construction that, for lack of a better description, feels jarring on the small of my back. A pair of sandals primed the pump prior to the picking-up-a-quarter fiasco, and my new (dammit) riding boots have done it the last two times. I’ve resolved never to wear those boots again unless I’m riding–not even for walking around the barn. Tennis shoes aren’t constructed for being in an English stirrup, and apparently, training boots aren’t meant to be on the ground. :rolleyes:

There is no magic bullet, but there are things that help a touch. I have a prescription for flexiril (muscle relaxant) on hand, and whenever the back starts to get ouchie, I take a half pill (full pill knocks me out for 20+ hours) at bedtime. That tends to nip it in the bud, but only if I can catch it. Now that it’s out, I take the muscle relaxant and some ibuprofen at night, and lay on the couch, knees bent and resting over a pillow, during the day. I try to avoid what I’m doing now–sitting at the computer–because it’s most painful. I read at an online health center that sitting is the most stressful on the vertebrae, too.

Like you, 1-2 days usually does the trick–IF for one of those days I pretty much do nothing but lie down and minimize movement. Today is day 2 and it’s still quite painful, but I…uh…well, spent the day cleaning. Hey, spring break! My house is a mess! My hubby had the car all day! I couldn’t just lie around! …So, now I have a really clean house and a still-achy back. Although I did notice–exercise hurt like hell (Stairmaster), but afterwards I was actually moving around in the kitchen freely enough to have forgotten my back hurt. Ah, a light at the end of the tunnel…

7

Okay, it bugs me that I said “one” and then had no “two” or “three.” I was thinking that linerally, but failed to number the rest of my thoughts. So…imagine a “two” introducing the 2nd paragraph and a “three” for the third…

8

Ow.:eek:
I hurt my back in much the same way growing up. My friends and I would watch gymnastics on TV and then attempt to imitate our heroes by repeating their moves on the hard soil of our backyards and front yards.
Now…if I stand for too long or do just the right thing (like ride certain types of carnival rides) I will ‘throw’ out my back and have to either get doped up on OTC painkillers or lay in bed for a day or so until my back decides to stop spasming.
Once, a few years ago, I threw it out by riding some funky, octopus-armed ride with carts that spun at amazingly high speeds. It was my OWN fault. It said right on the sign on the front of the ride “DO NOT RIDE THIS IF YOU HAVE:” and listed off several things, back problems included. Stupid me I thought Nah…I’ll be fine. Haven’t had a back episode in a loooong time. Wrong-O.
CG had to nurse me while I laid on the couch on a hot pad for three solid days and I had to miss work all for 5 minutes of pure,unadulterated silliness.

So I feel yer pain.

IDBB

9

I feel your pain . . . literally.

In fact, I’m headed to a pain specialist in a few days. Back in November, I was rear-ended at a dead stop by a woman going at least 60 MPH. It totalled my car, and my back. Three months of physical therapy did nothing for me. I’ve had MRIs, x-rays and a host of other tests, and they can’t find the problem.

I’m in constant discomfort, and it’s affecting my job. I work in a museum, and when I’m not hunched over a desk cleaning a delicate artifact, I’m carrying things to and from storage, as well as giving tours of the facility and helping to design and build new exhibits. I need to be able to bend, lift, stretch, and hunch over a desk for hours on end. Instead, my kind-hearted co-workers insist on taking on these tasks for me, making me feel guilty.

I’m concerned about the pain specialist. I hope he/she doesn’t dope me up worse than the medication I already have. (I’m on five different pills at the moment.) When handling thousand-year-old delicate artifacts, I need to have my wits about me. Yet, I’m so frustrated with the pain. I just want to get better, dammit, but it’s not happening.

10

I seem to have “chronic” back pain.

It hurts to some degree all of the time, mostly it’s just an annoyance that 600 mg of ibuprofin takes care of.

Then, occasionally, my back goes into hypermode when it hurts to friggin’ breathe.

I’ve treated with a chiropractor occasionally for several years but I’m not so sure it isn’t just a bandaid solution.

11

I have felt your pain but it has been a year now since my last incident. I injured my back 15 years ago lifting a trailer hitch but the pain was on the side of my back which I assumed was a muscle pull. Then about 4-5 years ago I had a sharp electric pain that radiated accross my back and I was laid up for 3 days. The first night I almost had to urinate in a pail.I could hardly move and I was very scared. I was able to walk and work after a week but the pain was with me for at least a month. Since that time I have had 3-4 more of these incidents and in each instance I was doing normal living types of body mechanics, like reaching for a trash can or bending over to pick something up. I have never reinjured myself by lifting something heavy since that first time. I have learned to squat now when picking something off the floor and bending my knees when doing any type of lfting. It really sucks because you can never be sure when it mightl happen again.Physical therapists inform me that stretching excersises would greatly help and I do them periodically but not daily. I have also found that cold and heat packs are the best in releiving the pain but it just takes 2-3 days before I can move about the house normally.

12

Just over five years ago, I had a run-in with a stair railing that wasn’t attached to the wall properly. When I put my hand on it, it decided that the sheetrock screws holding it to the sheetrock wall had met their match so it came loose, fell off the wall and took me for a ride. Oh, by the way, this was a California workers’ comp case, which is a no-fault insurance model, so I can’t sue anybody.

Tell me, Don Pardo, what have I won?

“You’ve won a case of cervical radiculopathy! And a lifetime supply of sciatica!”

Yep, herniated discs all the way along from C3 to T1. No idea specifically what’s been wrecked in the lumbar and/or sacro-iliac regions as the neurosurgeon was too interested with the chaos in my neck that could potentially paralyze me. :eek:

The damage is bad, but at my age, not bad enough to justify the perils of surgery. (euphemistically termed an unfortunate surgical outcome) I’ve got too many prospective years ahead of me to warrant a C4-C7 fusion, as the joints at either end (C3-C4 and C7-T1) would take on the extra load of rotation and flexion that C4-C7 are no longer capable of. This doubling (or more) of load would wreck them in about 10 years, and I’d then be in worse shape than today.

Some level of ache is always with me. Numbness in my right arm is not unusual. A touch of foot drop, also on the right pops up now and then. Headache is common. And, every so often, the lumbar and/or S-I rebel and go into spasm. The last time that happened, I was just walking across a parking lot. I got a jolt of pain, and for a few moments simply couldn’t move until I caught my breath and was able to wrestle enough mind over matter to make my legs start moving again.

What keeps me going?

At work, I was able to wrestle an adjustable seventeen ways till Sunday Aeron chair, which is worlds better than the corporate standard lump of foam on wheels. Completing the uber-geek look is the modified articulated keyboard tray and 22" monitor. (Gotta keep my eyes happy too!)

Those of you who can take half a Flexeril and get all limp and happy, or two Aleve to kill the pain - I’m insanely envious. I can take three Darvocet and two or three Flexeril and feel vaguely buzzed. Seriously, the only thing I can ingest that has a significant analgesic effect is a prescription from Dr. Jack Daniels. I’m not sure what’s worse - getting blotto on pharmaceuticals or booze. The liquor is certainly cheaper than prescriptions. :rolleyes:

Rounding it all out is regular visits to my chiropractor and a fellow I can’t quite pin a description on. He’s not quite a chiropractor, but a good bit more than a massage therapist with some holistic/wholistic and shaman mixed in. After an hour on his table, I’m a bit taller and a hell of a lot more flexible. Unfortunately, the effects aren’t permanent.

I’m not about to recommend people start trying to drink their pain away or that chiropractic is the be-all and end-all, but for me, it more or less works enough to keep me functional about 98% of the time.

13

I grew up on a farm and left at age 16. I had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis as a teenager, which I’ve grown out of (which has since become full blown arthritis at the ripe old age of 30). My mom thinks that the farm has cursed our family with bad backs. My poor 22-year-old sister has back problems now because of the farm. Mom’s selling the farm, now, incidentally. I think she’s secretly hoping we’ll all be released from this horrid ‘curse’ she thinks we’ve got because of it.

Two years ago my back went out and I was down for a week, but it went away fairly quickly. I felt crooked for awhile. I got pissed off at my doctor because he fed me some line (so I thought) about how so many people suffer from “chronic” back pain, which basically implied to me that I was going to be one of those people so just I should just deal with it. Bastard. It got better. I went on with my life.

Fast forward two years. I tried to hug my boyfriend a couple times and my back went into spasms to a point where I couldn’t move for a few moments. Went on a cross-country trip (I don’t recommend sitting in a plane for any length of time if you have a bad back. Spent my entire vacation prone (it was at the farm where I’d been cursed to begin with, so I didn’t feel too guilty). Mom thinks whiskey’s a good remedy for back pain, so I tried that while I was there. It worked until I had to get back on a plane to cross the country again.

Fast forward a month. I’m in physical therapy. I wear a back brace to work every day. (I’m sitting here in a crappy desk chair screwing up all the stuff I’d like to think I fixed since last friday). Ugh! I’m just tired of being in pain! I like gardening. I like exercising. I miss doing the stuff I like!! I don’t feel out of shape but I still hurt. :frowning:

I hope all of you who are hurting feel better soon!!!

14

hehe… two votes for whiskey as a remedy for back pain :smiley:

15

I still have no clue what I did to my back mid December. I got a dull ache in the centre of my upper back, right between my shoulder blades. Constant dull pain. Not enough to get time off work but enough to piss me the hell off and be very very grumpy a lot of the time. I did the whole meds/staying in bed route and it got better… for about 2 days. Then the minute I got outta bed, bang back it came.

Now its in my neck and shoulders - some days I can barely move my head - the pain is more severe but of a different type - again not enough to stay off work (even though I do get paid for it) but enough to make me start thinking of taking a week or two off.

I’m going to a chiropractor regularly and yes, its made a difference… but its not gone and I’m pissed the hell off about it. I’m gonna try acupunture next (some of my friends swear by it).

Oh and I got drunk last night and had no pain for the whole night … maybe becoming an alcholic is the answer :eek::stuck_out_tongue:

I feel all your pain, everyday … ho hum.

16

I injured my lower back when I was 13 in a freak toboganning accident. That caused me woe off and on throughout my teenage years and into my early 20s, but a rigorous abdominal strengthening regime for 6 months has pretty much solved that problem.

So of course last November, I get out of bed on a Saturday and pull something in my upper back, inducing severe acute pain greater than anything I ever did to my lower back. It was a day before I could get to a clinic and get some strong muscle relaxants. It’s twinged out on me three times since then (including Monday morning), but not enough to cause me hassles.

I have the upper back traced down to three things: my mattress; my pillow; my work desk. I had just replaced my pillow prior to the November incident, so that got ditched. I raised my computer screen by two phone books, so that helps (and I wish I could push it farther back, but that’s impossible). And I’m getting a new mattress this week.

Don’t let the pain stop you!

17

Darn I forgot to mention TENS units. This can work for some people, and is deffinately real (not hookey stuff). A TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation) unit is an electrical device that pumps controlled levels of electrical signals through muscles just under the skin. This has the effect of stimulating the pain detection nerves in a not too unpleasant way. The result is a localised production of endorphins, plus dissruption of the pain signals. I have found it very useful for the localised pains I get from very tight muscles in my upper back. After using a TENS unit on them for about 20 minutes the area feels relaxed and pain free for several hours afterwards.
Ask you doctor/physio about TENS units if you are interested.
Cheers, Bippy

18

That sucks GOT. I’m in a similar situation as far as the workers comp goes but here in PA you’re allowed to sue your comp insurance. There’s no way I can return to the type of work I did either (sewer repairs) so any settlement I do get (if any at all) will have to carry me quite a long way.

One few things I did learn from therapy was:

  1. Instead of sitting straight up in bed when you wake up, roll onto your side then use your arms to get yourself up.

  2. stretching the hamstrings + calves daily (which I stopped doing)

  3. having my wife do all the work during sex (yeah right!)

My doctor told me that when you bend over , your back exerts something like 500 psi on your discs. Thats a lotta PSI.

19

:frowning: Ow.

I’m another six month repeater. Sometimes it’s my own fault, like a long session in front of the computer with poor posture, or sometimes it’s just sneaks up on me, like bending over the sink, or reaching up to a shelf.

Today is my own fault, and so was wasting yesterday lying in bed trying not to move. I could have sat down to do that DIY job, instead I stood and reached. :smack: Hopefully, by tomorrow I’ll be walking like a human again rather than a primate with a golf club stuck up my fur.

I’ve learnt through bitter experience to follow a series of careful stretches first thing in the morning, pushing up against a wall. And always, always stretch and warm up before any exercise.

20

A college roomate came visiting last week. We went golfing and the pro said “we have an open time in 45 minutes or you can go out right now”, so the first swing of the day was on the tee box. No warm up of any kind. Walked 18 holes, then went hiking the next morning.

I followed that up with 6 hours in the car, taking said friend to the airport and daughter across the state for a soccer tournament. Woke up Saturday morning needing help to get out of bed. Watched the game, then another 4.5 hours in the car home. Haven’t slept for 2 hours straight since.

It feels like someone is driving an ice pick through my belt into my lower back. I get up every hour and take a walk - it’s the only thing that helps.

I feel your pain.