What to Learn From Back Pain

I’d like to go a little off topic and talk about my back problems. As an IT consultant I’ve been sitting all day for years. I’ve often slouched in the chair at work as I got tired during the day. I also play guitar all the time so in 2001 my back finally had enough. I’ve been having problems with it ever since, but a year or so ago my back pain went to a whole new level.

I finally got an MRI and it showed a couple bulging disks at S1 and L5 and that my S1 disk didn’t fuse as it does for most people. But no one thought it was bad enought to warrant surgery so I started Active Release Therapy (ART). Turns out my piriformis muscle under the glutes was really tight. The ART or something triggered severe spasms in the piriformis. It was excruciating. I was working in Victoria at the time and having trouble walking until it would start to loosen, and I would also get brutal spasms at 4 in the morning. I was trying traction and core strengthening to help but nothing was working.

Back in Calgary I started Intramuscular stimulation (IMS) where they stick needles deep in to piriformis, much deeper than acupuncture. After a few months it started to feel better. I started to do a few exercises and it came back screaming fast. The IMS didn’t work this time, they tried another machine and finally sent me for a nerve root block at S1 disk level. The radiologist tries to hit the nerve before he injects the material. After a while he couldn’t find the nerve so he just released the material in the general area. I wasn’t confident that it would work. I couldn’t believe it but that made a huge difference within a day. I went back for IMS and the needle didn’t do anything (normally it triggers the muscle to twitch). So it made me think the origin of the problem is the nerve root itself. But the IMS staff didn’t want to do any more injections because they wanted to be conservative. They were worried about long term effects of the injections. But after reading some information online, I realized that the injections were often used as a diagnosis. To me the process hadn’t been completed since they only did one injection. In other words, they didn’t although they came close to discovering the root of the problem (bad pun), they really didn’t fully diagnose the issue to completion.

So I went to the walk-in clinic recently and explained the story. The doctor had no problem sending me for two more injections, this time in the facet joints. It pays to be persistent!

After a while I still had the problems in the morning, nowhere near as bad but a little annoying. It’s been about 2-3 months now so I went in for a couple facet joint injections and they don’t seem to be helping. So next I’m going to try a nerve root block at L5 and S1 (again).

Lessons learned: A person can persevere through a lot of adversity. And second, like any problem, you need to keep pursuing a solution and never give up. Okay, three, try to maintain good posture during work – use a lumbar support if your chair doesn’t have a decent support.