Not looking for medical advice, just wondering if anyone has gone through what I am currently experiencing.
I inherited a bicycle a few months ago and went on 2 back-to-back long bike rides, and for the next week, I could hardly get out of the driver’s seat of my car without excruciating tailbone pain. This seems to be the activity that most irritates my tailbone- the actual raising of myself up out of my car seat. (I did not do any “off-road” biking or hit any potholes or other jarring activity- just good old road biking.)
Now when I change seating (such as moving from work chair to driver’s seat or from one chair to another), as I relax into the seat, the pain of the “release” of my tailbone joint (I have no idea if this is exactly what is happening, physiologically, but let’s just say when I relax my butt into the seat, I feel this excruciating singular stabbing pain coming and sometimes it’s so intense that I have to clench my butt-cheeks until I can handle the pain. Once it “releases”, I’m fine.
I have felt this discomfort before in my tailbone, but not to the intense degree that I’m feeling it now. It seems to not be going away, and I wonder what in the heck I’ve done to myself!
Can anyone out there possibly relate to this weird pain I’m dealing with?
You probably bruised it really good. It takes time for that to go away, as you are always sitting on something, which aggravates it. Go buy one of those inflatable donuts at your local pharmacy and sit on it whenever you can until your bruising heals. Also, anti-inflammatories like aspirin help. I fell on my tailbone on a piece of pipe many, many years ago and lay there paralyzed for several minutes. It went away, but 30 years later I had a pain flare-up that I thought I was never going to get rid of. Even today, I can’t sit in folding chairs (or those accursed stackable “seminar chairs”) for more than a few minutes without discomfort.
Are you sure you didn’t break it? Both of you, actually considering Chefguy’s painful chair comment. I broke mine rollerskating, and for a couple of weeks the pressure and pain when standing was terrible even after the bruise faded away. 15 years later I still can’t sit in most chairs without pain after an hour or two.
I suspect I may have broken mine. I never had an x-ray to find out. It’s the only thing that would explain the misery years later. I spent a year sitting on seat cushions with a piece cut out to take pressure off, but anything I sat on without it was painful.
Oh, great. I cracked mine in February of 2009. I thought it would eventually heal and stop causing me pain. Now, thanks to Chefguy and elfkin 477, I realize I have a lifetime of misery to look forward to!
I had no problems for many, many years. Just be careful how you sit and on what, and try to keep your weight down over the years. I’ve come to the belated conclusion that all these extra pounds are either the cause, or a contributor to the cause, of all my various problems.
I started having this issue after losing a significant amount of weight. I’m not bony, by any means, finally within a normal BMI range but the pain was significant enough that I went to a doctor about it. I had a series of x-rays but nothing was broken. She put me on anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxers without much effect so I seldom take them. Now, I just try to live with is as best I can. I bought a coccyx pillow that helps somewhat.
It does sound as if you’ve injured yourself, in which case I hope it eases up soon. I’ve been dealing with this for several months now and it appears to be one of those mysteries I’ll just have to deal with.
I had something like that after I gave birth to my first baby. For a while it was really bad the whole time I was sitting, which was interesting, to say the least, with a baby who needed feeding all the time. I sat forward on any seat, and very upright. Not relaxing, but less painful. After a while it was not so bad while I was sitting, but as I stood up it would stab me hard. There were a couple of times it was so bad I almost dropped the baby. I don’t know if it was broken, because by the time I went in for my follow-up checkup the pain was pretty much gone and I forgot to ask about it.
I think I broke it during the delivery, but I guess I’ll never know.
I would say this is exactly what’s happening. I had a similar thing. There was no break or sprain, but it hurt and by sitting on it, I was aggrevating it. I had to use an inflatable cushion and then sit weird for about 4 days till it went away.
I actually experienced something very similar 15 years ago. I had intermittent excruciating pain in my tailbone and lower back that would usually last 10 or 20 seconds each time. Sometimes it would happen from standing up or sitting, or sometimes just walking or standing and moving slightly in a certain direction. It would happen multiple times per day for about a 2 month period until it finally disappeared completely. I was scared for a while that I hurt myself permanently but luckily, I haven’t felt any back pain since 1995.
Oh, and the source of the tailbone injury was a very weird and uncomfortable sexual position I was in for a prolonged period of time (about 5 minutes).
Yeah, I had to deal with that after falling out of a tree as a kid. As far as I know I only bruised it, but it took a long time for the pain to go away. It still bothers me sometimes depending on how I’m sitting or what I’m sitting on, though I don’t know if that’s related to the old injury or something totally normal.
Broke my tailbone ice skating and having a spectacular fall at the age of 5, made it worse by taking up dressage and steeplechase at the age of 7. Now I have significant impingement in the sacrum, significant impingement in both hip sockets, osteoarthritis in both knees … but my ankles are good and solid despite spending the last 3 years of high school playing soccer and pretty much living with strained ankles and shin splints most of that time [and getting both knees thrashed out every year is what caused the OA in my knees] :smack:
So much for exercise is good for you … I basically thrashed my body permanently before I was 18, and now I am reaping the suffering that I sowed lo those many years ago. I really do wish that people would stop and think about what they are letting their kids DO to themselves.
A broken or bruised tailbone is a real pain in the ass.
I broke mine about my senior year in HS. I was having a real hard time sitting through school and started to get spasms, so off to the doctor I go. He said he could set it back in place and the pain would subside. Great!
Except setting a tailbone involves a rubber glove, KY jelly, the all-fours position on the examination table, and in my case a doctor with fingers the size of a baseball bat.
“This might hurt a little” was probably the understatement of the decade, and I think I broke his finger in the process.
Interesting. I’ve been reading crunchy granola natural birthing books, and they say that during delivery, the tailbone needs to flex backward… and that lying on your back stops it from doing that. Were you on your back? I bet that could have bruised it.