FRUSTRATED! 4yrs ago or so i visited an ortho that ran an mri and then handed me a referral told me he couldnt do anything for me… this was the largest ortho outfit in the city that handles the pro football players etc…. theyre all about marketing… why they wouldnt handle my disc injuries is beyond me.. im glad though because i couldnt understand the dudes broken english lol… anyway, i thought why is he sending me too pain mgt ie. pain pill mill…. they arent in any innovative in surgical techniques.. in fact, i had too obtain a printout from a pharmacist describing new meds like 15mg, 30mg oxycodone tabs that contain zero tylenol… the pain doc argued that i was wrong and that he was giving me 10mg tylenol loaded percocets 10x a day.. no way! he said they didnt make 15,30mg stuff.. anyway, im on 10 of the 15mg oxycodones a day and im tired of pills.. im tired of lyrika ( anti seizure med used for nerve pain) im tired anti inflammatories…. part of this is due too the fact that ive exhausted physical therapy, epidural injects, chiro care, and all im doing is graduating each year on pain meds to a stronger dose… ive been offered fentanyl,oxycontin, methadone, none of which i wish too endure… never! i dont know anymore if a pain pill clinic is for me? the top doc is an ortho surgeon and if you ask me, a man with a hammer will hit anything that looks like a nail… just like this dude,hes an awesome caring doc but hey, is surgery the answer? everyone ive met thats had back surgery, from laminectomies to minimally invasive laser disc jobs all are still eating pain meds and in pain….. how does a patient know what is best for treatment options? if i go too an ortho, he wants the knife… if i go too a pain clinic, they hand you oxycontin, if i go too a laser procedure joint, they will say laser me! is there really a way too heal and live a normal life after disc injuries? eating pain meds and visiting the doc for more rx’s is where im at… ive seen athletes come back and play pro football after disc injuries and i doubt they are living on oxycontin ea day… is their a solution of fix for disc injuries? surgery worries me, i know its just a 50/50 shot and they hope it works.. ive yet too see anyone say theyve had a successful procedure and quit pain meds… so do i accept that im on pain meds for the rest of my life and live with it?
i would like too get in a gym and exercise, aerobics, light weights? is this out of the question? working out/exercising and bodybuilding was daily thing for me.. i competed and now here i sit… woohooo! percocets! o boy! any atheletes out there?
I lived most of my life in pain, fell out of a car when I was 3 and hit by another when I was 7. My body was in bad shape and spent over 30 years in p.t, chiropractors and acupuncture. None of it was of any real help. Then I got into muscle releasing and I finally found a way that took away the pains my body had in it all those years. For your back it’s all about the muscles, nothing else back there that can carry pain except the nerves directly and if it was them you would be in the ER right now. That leaves bones and muscles and bones have no feeling sensors in them so you are left with the muscles. Once you release the muscles you should be pain free. That you have been in this pain for so long it is probably going to take a week or two to get them all released and to keep them in their new home. I would also go for a minimum of 3 times a day for the first week and once for the second although more is ok too. Here are the releases to do:
For your neck:
place your hand alongside your head and push your thumb in under your ear and place it on the muscle there. Take your fingers and place them on the back of your neck on the muscles there. Press them together and hold a good amount of pressure on them. Then relax, take a deep breath an happening, the muscle going limp under the pressure. Continue to hold until the entire muscle has gone limp.
Back:
Place your left hand on your left knee. Place your right hand over your left shoulder and with your fingertips find the muscle next to your spine. Press on it and hold. Relax, take a deep breath and exhale and don’t tense up any part of your body. After about 30 seconds there should be a release happening and when it does slowly lower yourself forward onto your right leg. If you can lean over the outside edge of your leg it will be better for your release. Continue holding for a total of one minute. Then release but rest your body there for one minute longer. Then reverse and do the right side.
I added the neck because they are so closely related that one can affect the other but concentrate more on the back.
#1 by b_bardi99 on December 16th, 2009
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Tito Ortiz had back surgery in Las Vegas, i think its a Dr named dr.Smith
i have a dog who had 2 disc surgeries:he is OK,but he is not an athlete.
i think surgery is needed if the disc is bulging/it will eventually rupture/
my dog had a ruptured disc in the neck,1.5yr later he had one in the lower back(lumbar area T12-L1)
one difference is,humans need the vertebrae fused,once you remove the disc from between them,dogs don’t have fusion,no pins or rods.
Also,yes, there is something called Laser Disc Ablation,it is a minimally invasive surgery,but only useful,if the disc or discs are not leaking(not ruptured yet)
References :
#2 by Jesusfreak on December 16th, 2009
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Oh man do I feel your pain. I was in constant pain for over six years. I too had been referred to a pain management, did everything else including physical therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic therapy, massages, injections, epidurals, trigger point injections, pain pills including oxicodone because I wasn’t able to continue taking Tylenol in pain meds as my liver enzymes went up. Percocet with Acetaminophen does contain Tylenol. I agree that taking 10 percocets a day is not a good thing and the Tylenol can damage your liver. You can check out http://www.tamethepain.com and/or contact me for further info. I got to the point at two years from my injury begging the orthopedic dr. to do surgery after a previous neurologist told me that nothing was wrong with my neck and I was to young for surgery. Turns out that when the surgeon finally got in there my disc was ruptured and leaking in the spinal canal and that was the reason for the severe pain but it lasted and never went away even after surgery. The muscles were still in spasms. A friend of mine was in a car accident and told she herniated a disc, had surgery within three months and says it was the best thing she did. I wonder to this day that if I had gone ahead with surgery if I would not have suffered as long or as much as I did but a lot of people didn’t realize how bad my pain was and thought exercise would help. It just made me worse in pain after working out with the weights in physical therapy. I think you would need at least an updated MRI or CT scan with contrast to see if there are any nerves being compressed. Five years after I decided to get off the drugs a new orthopedic dr. suggested I get a myelogram done and was surprised I never had one at all. It would have shown the previous ruptured disc but instead the MRI’s kept giving different results because each one was either closer or an open MRI so it didn’t see as close up to the tissues. Good luck with your options and decisions. By now you are probably already dependent on the pain meds. I made a huge mistake of getting off the drugs to soon before I knew how I would feel off of them. I told my dr. that I wanted to see how I would feel off of them by being detoxed and I was in bed for two months straight in the most severe pain and my dr. wouldn’t give me any pain meds because I had been detoxed. Never again! I did try to wean off of the meds myself but because of the pain I could never do it. Some idiot told me I would feel a lot better being off the pain meds but they were so wrong. I finally found a dr. able to do the last resort to help relieve my pain. She put in a spinal cord stimulator trial to see if it helped. If it did then I would be set to get a permanet one put in. It’s put in like an epidural catheter. Jerry Lewis has one and I didn’t even know spinal cord stimulators existed until my aunt told me about them. It’s not a cure for pain but a last resort when all else fails. I would strongly look into getting a better picture to see what’s going on and make your decision on what to do. You may be able to be fixed and no longer have to suffer in this pain. I was at the point of telling my doctor to either fix me or kill me both before the disc was removed and before I had the spinal cord stimulator implant. I no longer feel I am drugged up all the time or have to limit my activities. The procedure may be 50/50 at this time maybe less but if it gives you relief I would get the best surgeon you can with recommendations. You at least are in the early enough stage for something to still be done and hopefully will take care of this. Waiting for it to get better may not be a good option since it’s gone on for this long. My MRI’s said herniated disc and didn’t show a ruptured disc but would have if I had the dye contrast put in the I.V. with a CT scan done in a hospital. Good luck.
Edited: I also had five epidurals in a year to help with the pain and my adrenals shut down requiring me to see an endocrinologist and get on steroids on the O.R. table because the dr. said that if I wasn’t put on them and I had a worse problem (he didn’t get to finish the testing before my neck surgery because of time) I could have died in surgery. After being on the steroids for about a year my dr. finally weaned me off of them and told me that the results were back to normal levels and my adrenals apparently woke up. Had I known not to take more than 3 epidurals I may have been able to prevent that problem from happening. My pain management dr. did a disservice to me and he kept trying to treat the pain with more injections. Some of them helped for a very short time like a couple of months however not enough to be off pain meds and the trigger points did nothing. Once I got the spinal cord stimulator and turned it on the pain started to go away within minutes. If I turn it off within about five or ten minutes my pain does return. I leave the second one that was put in on 24/7 and the first one I only use during the day to add stimulation to my arms if needed. The majority of my pain is/was at my tricep muscle shoulder areas on both sides.
References :
Two spinal cord stimulators put in for severe chronic pain due to a ruptured disc and RSD/CRPS and now pain is controlled and I have my life back.
#3 by grandma on December 16th, 2009
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I’m going to keep it simple for you, my husband & son had very bad problems with back pain. Anyway son had a rupture so surgery was in order but he had to be very careful with his back, the next time his back went out he went for a treatment called Vax-D where you’re strapped to a table and hold on to some handles and they gently separate the vertebrae which allows the blood to flow between the disc and all and helps heal. Treatment is daily during the week usually 20 or more could be 26 to 30 days except weekends. At the time insurance did cover these treatments. My husband had what is called Chymopapaine shots in his back or disc it is a derivative of papaya the fruit (extract) in Canada,he also had Vax-D later on. Both successful. Add to that some walking pool therapy and you just might feel a difference. Good Luck
References :
ps no weights for now just floor exercise flat on your back there are some very good techniques availabe at your local Ortho. and water therapy eases pain due to lack of gravity!
#4 by Douglas B on December 16th, 2009
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I lived most of my life in pain, fell out of a car when I was 3 and hit by another when I was 7. My body was in bad shape and spent over 30 years in p.t, chiropractors and acupuncture. None of it was of any real help. Then I got into muscle releasing and I finally found a way that took away the pains my body had in it all those years. For your back it’s all about the muscles, nothing else back there that can carry pain except the nerves directly and if it was them you would be in the ER right now. That leaves bones and muscles and bones have no feeling sensors in them so you are left with the muscles. Once you release the muscles you should be pain free. That you have been in this pain for so long it is probably going to take a week or two to get them all released and to keep them in their new home. I would also go for a minimum of 3 times a day for the first week and once for the second although more is ok too. Here are the releases to do:
For your neck:
place your hand alongside your head and push your thumb in under your ear and place it on the muscle there. Take your fingers and place them on the back of your neck on the muscles there. Press them together and hold a good amount of pressure on them. Then relax, take a deep breath an happening, the muscle going limp under the pressure. Continue to hold until the entire muscle has gone limp.
Back:
Place your left hand on your left knee. Place your right hand over your left shoulder and with your fingertips find the muscle next to your spine. Press on it and hold. Relax, take a deep breath and exhale and don’t tense up any part of your body. After about 30 seconds there should be a release happening and when it does slowly lower yourself forward onto your right leg. If you can lean over the outside edge of your leg it will be better for your release. Continue holding for a total of one minute. Then release but rest your body there for one minute longer. Then reverse and do the right side.
I added the neck because they are so closely related that one can affect the other but concentrate more on the back.
References :