This is truly just a mundane thing I must share. For a couple weeks I’ve been having lower back pain that’s moved down to my thighs (skipping my hips, strangely–how weird is that?) and occasionally around to my lower abdomen. Thought it was related to my period but that came and went and my lovely backache stayed. I was treating it with heating pads, advil, and bengay (which I’ve started to smell like–another reason I feel like an old man). I figured it was just muscle pain and started doing some stretches I learned in a massage therapy class and a karate class, but my husband wisely suggested I go to the doctor first in case I made things worse.
I went to the doctor this morning, who had fingers of steel and was apparently trying to remove my kidneys and my ovaries with his bare hands.
Dr: “Does it hurt here?” He pokes right at the top of the muscle that had mercifully stopped hurting, making it cramp.
Me: “Gahk!”
Conclusion: No nerve damage or internal issues. I sit on my ass too much, basically. Figured. Most days I sit at the library or a coffee shop and work, and I rarely work out. The unholy thing is that I’ll walk around and do some housework–feels great! I’ll go to the store–feels great! I sit down to work–ow. I sit down to relax–ow. It’s completely backwards from any pain I’ve ever exprienced. It hurts when I sit down to relax. Come on.
So I’m gonna the stretches he gave me and use my bengay, and keep working with my doctor of course, but I’m also going to try to carve out time in my schedule to try and walk at least a mile every day, or go to the gym (we have an alumni discount on our university gym, but it’s a good 15 minute drive away, and that’s nothing to sneeze at for gas or time). I’m self employed so I can make a schedule that works for me, but I’m not sure when I’m most productive yet–need to think about how I work first. Anybody have tips for scheduling this into your life? Or stories and sympathy are nice, too.
Oh yeah, gout. My boss has that and I had a hard time lifting my jaw off the floor when he told me because I always assumed it was one of those Woodhousian ailments, right?
But lumbago is just a fancy word for muscle pain in the lower back. (lumbar region) The doctor actually only used it because he gave me a sheet of exercises that was entited “Exercises for Acute Lumbago.” I think people probably stopped using the word because it made them feel old.
There may be more specific issues associated with diagnosing it, but I didn’t ask because I’d heard the word before. My pain is in the large muscles of my lower back, and after poking and prodding and testing muscle strength and asking about numbness he decided I didn’t seem to have nerve damage.
That is, almost word for word, the horrible pun my dad made when I called my parents to reassure them that I hadn’t broken my back.
Lumbago is just lower back pain? I always thought it was one of those vague possibly-psychosomatic ailments like ‘consumption’ that were redefined out of existence with better techniques… so of course it was only the old people who were still complaining of it.
I know, it sounds so serious, doesn’t it? Wikipedia says that it can apparently be psychosomatic as well, but I think mine is just because I’m a lazy bum.
