Letting Life Lead

Pain has been my constant companion for almost a year.

Like a character in an adventure novel, life keeps throwing obstacles at me.  Since the release of Hope (The World In-between 5), both my parents passed away and I got divorced.  As I have been healing emotionally, my body has been going the opposite direction.  Specifically, my back.

I am under doctors’ care, and I have seen a reduction in pain.  However, my journey is far from over.  Perhaps it would be best to explain how I got here.

Back pain seems to have been a steady thing for me for years.  I always thought it was my stress residing in my back muscles.  My back was so bad last year that my boyfriend got me a massage for my birthday.  It was glorious.  Then, a month or so later, the pain started to return.  Not just in my shoulders, but in my lower back as well.  After a couple more massages, I decided that I needed to do more for my back.  I started yoga.

I love yoga.  Not power yoga.  Not hot yoga.  Taking the time to get into the pose, then holding that pose all while breathing properly is beautiful.  Yoga gave me a way to relieve stress.  My posture improved.  My balance improved.  Muscles began to tone.  However, the one pose I could not do without pain was savasana, where you lie on your back with arms and legs extended on the mat.  My lower back would hurt every time.  I would either have to use a bolster under my thighs or bend my knees to relieve the pressure on the back.

The back pain persisted.  I would take a heating pad to work to help with the lower back pain.  I told myself that I needed to strengthen my core to alleviate it.  Some nights, sleeping hurt.  A shower and movement seemed to make it temporarily better.  Then, every morning hurt.  Every day hurt.

One morning, I needed help getting out of bed.  I had trouble bending to put my clothes on.  The pain did not allow me to focus on work.  I called my doctor to make an appointment.  Since I hadn’t been there in a few years (one of them being during the pandemic when you couldn’t make appointments), I would have to be treated like a new patient.  First available appointment was two months away.  I called another doctor’s office.  Got an appointment in two weeks.  In the meantime, I went to urgent care.

Urgent care took x-rays of my spine and said there was nothing wrong.  They sent me home with a steroid taper pack and muscle relaxers, knowing I had a doc appointment soon.  The medicine worked.  For about a week.

When I finally got to the new doctor, he ordered a bunch of tests to determine the cause of my pain.  He also sent me to physical therapy for my sciatica.  That pain was traveling from my toes to my shoulder.

The CT and ultrasound did not have answers to my back pain.  Physical therapy took care of the sciatica pain in two or three weeks.  However, they could not reduce my back pain.  The physical therapist said that I really needed an MRI to get a better look.  My doctor had ordered an MRI.  I had one scheduled for the next month—a few weeks from then.

The insurance denied the MRI, stating that it wasn’t medically necessary.

My doctor messaged me, saying that in order for the insurance to approve the MRI, I needed to have six weeks of physical therapy without significant improvement.  Needless to say, I continued to go to physical therapy.  I made a meager four percent improvement in six weeks.  After the sixth week session, I was able to make a new MRI appointment.  Which wouldn’t be for another two months.

Although I no longer suffered from sciatica, the back pain crippled me.  I couldn’t go to yoga.  I could barely walk.  Sleep was a distant memory.  I didn’t know how to not be in pain.  Bending was the most difficult.  Everyday tasks became a chore.  I couldn’t do simple things like brush my teeth without leaning on something.  I got dressed in slow motion.

To get me through, my doctor prescribed a stronger muscle relaxer than what urgent care gave me.  It knocked me out.  The first time I took it, I passed out where I sat for a little over an hour.  The medicine took care of some of the pain.

Work allowed me to take my laptop home.  I eventually got set up on a folding table with a keyboard, mouse, and extra monitors.  At first, working from home was weird.  But, it helped me.  I could not move or sit in a real chair.  Pain became my new normal.  And, I bided my time until the MRI.

The MRI itself was ….  The tech had to help me off the table after the 40 minutes of weird noises.  Then I walked hunched back to the waiting room where my boyfriend and clothing waited.  Good thing he drove.

My doctor messaged me immediately after the results showed on the patient portal.  He referred me to an orthopedic doctor.  I made an appointment.  First available was in two weeks.  Later that week, I had the follow up appointment with my regular doctor.  He sits down to tell me that my back is worse than he first thought.  The diagnosis has multiple layers.

The cause of my immense pain was a herniated disc in my lower back with torn cartilage.  Oh, and I have degenerative disc disease.  While everyone has some degeneration, mine is more advanced than what people my age should have.  Apparently, a normal person’s spine begins to degenerate in their 40s whereas my 40 some year old spine is equivalent to someone’s in their 70s.

He sent me home with a script for oxycodone.

For those who don’t know, oxycodone is an opiate narcotic.  It blocks the receptors in the brain so you do not feel the pain.  It does nothing to the mitigate the cause of the pain.  Opiates are band aids not solutions.  When I normally have pain, I take chewable baby aspirin.  This was a pain on a level I never knew existed.  My entire lower back radiated heat.  I took the pill.

Vertigo.  I cut the pill in half after that.  Half a pill still made me dizzy.  However, it brought the pain down to a more tolerable level.  Thank goodness I was working from home already, because I would not have been able to drive.

When I went to see the orthopedic surgeon, he told me I was too young for this.  He also said that operating on my spine should only be a last resort.  Operating would cause an increase in the rate of degradation of the surrounding discs.  He referred me to the pain management clinic.

The first available appointment for the pain management clinic was six weeks away.  My base level pain was an eight.  No one could do anything for me.  All I had was the pill I hated taking.  Six weeks is a long time especially when you’re in pain.  I had to try to help myself.

Searching the internet can be both a gift and a curse, especially for medical information.  I learned more about the condition I will have for the rest of my life.  Unfortunately, many dismiss as a geriatric disease.  I also learned that there are things I can do for my spine.  Supplements, diet, and exercise.

While waiting for my appointment date, I began taking turmeric.  Game changer.  It helps with the inflammation, so it lessened the pain.  I also started taking collagen peptides for the cartilage.  I read studies on both turmeric and collagen for the back.  Diet wise, I added more protein and gelatin.  To help my back, I started walking more often and returned to very gentle yoga.

Simply because a study or a random person says this worked, it doesn’t mean it will work for everybody.  Before trying anything, always do your own research.  Then, still proceed with caution.

The pain management doctors were great.  I’ve seen them twice now.  They know the constraints of the insurance companies and work with you.  They also are aware that getting an appointment with them is difficult.  During my first appointment, I waited while they contacted my insurance for approval of a same day steroid epidural.  

That shot hurt.  For days afterwards.

It took a week for the muscles in my back to relax.  That was a different type of pain.  Then it took another week for it all to settle.  Six weeks after the first injection, I received a second.  Felt completely different.  They told me this one will last longer than the first.

It’s been a little over a week since the second epidural.  I still have some pain.  However, I don’t think it’s from the herniated disc.  I think it’s some painful osteoarthritis in my hip.  They said that they will tackle the arthritis next.  Insurance only allows one ailment at a time, regardless of falling apart all at once.

The future holds more doctor visits.  More exercise.  More blog posts.  And hopefully, less pain.

If there’s something in this post that you would like to know more about, let me know in the comments or reach out on X.