thundermug

Well I did the shots and got 2 weeks relief, yet I still woke up several times at night with a little pain. The shots were terrible to get. my pulse was 50% higher than normal, and... well, lets just say I wasn' t going thru that again! I ended up going to another Dr. that I' ve known for years and has been a friend, we go to the same church, his mother lives 4doors down, and I spoke at his fathers funeral.
He put me on pain pills and muscle relaxers, sorta permamently. I' ve been pain free for 3 days, I sleep all night, and I' m gonna be able to shoot my bow again!

YEEHAW!

Lady Forge

Well I hope it all goes better for you now, Enjoy shooting that bow now, but take it easy

Arthur P

Well, I would say ' I told ya so' but I ain' t the kinda guy that would do that. Just remember that the pain pills and muscle relaxers are masking the problem, not fixing it. It' s the hardest thing in the world to do, but you have to accept that, no matter how good you feel, there are things that you shouldn' t do. (Fortunately, bow shooting isn' t on that no-no list. )

I know what you mean about the sleep stuff. If I lay in bed more than 5-6 hours at a stretch, I' m ruined the next day. I think I did get a solid 8 hours of sleep one night last October...

jgttechjunkie

I hurt my back in a fall many years ago. The only advice I can give is what I am sure you have learned already:
a) beware of muscle relaxers and pain killers. The pain and spasms are telling you something about your back, and if you remove their signals it is always easy to forget and do something again that damages things further.
b) this is particularly true of pain killers. Learn to live with the pain. Isolate it in your mind. Temporary use of the muscle relaxers is fine, but the pain killers are a waste of money in the long run.
c) The stomach muscles are the most important protection you have against back damage - exercise them. Get rid of excess weight.
d) Beware of people who propose operations, particularly fusing parts of your spine. I had an over eager surgeon who wanted to do that, claimed I would not notice any loss of flexibility and that it would solve my problem. I didn' t have the surgery, and since have learned that in 10 to 15 years people who have the back fusing start having other problems because of the added stress on parts of the back near the fused place.
e) don' t shovel snow, don' t sit for long periods of time, don' t stand for long periods of time, ... When everybody is pitching in moving something ignore the urge to join in, even if you see some frail person contributing more than you are. I don' t have to tell you this, from experience you learn these things pretty quickly. No fun to help someone unload a grocery cart and then find yourself needing to spend a week in bed on your back.
f) Good luck. I found a book called " Oh my aching back" which gave me some exercises to do and other advice. I used to give copies to friends who had problems.

bigcountry25

I have had back problems for several years, well problaly since I was about 12 yeara old after I went and seen a specialist. Went and had MRI' s done and all it showed was to small bulges in my lower back not for sure on the location and alot of arthritis and my age was only 26 at the time of the MRI, the DR. told me I had more arthritis than most 70 year olds with arthritis in the back and they don' t know why. And after see my DR after the results he just basicaly said you are going to have to live with it because the bulges are should not be a problem and gave me some arthritis meds. My pain was in my lower back, down my legs and groin musclue pulls. The groin musclue pulls and tears I have has since I was around 12 years old but the DR' s always blamed it on sports. Well to make I long story short I didn' t like what my DR said so I went to a specialist in St. Louis MO and he looked at my MRI and said the Bulges were not bad and should cause no problems but said I had a " great amount of arthritis" but that also was not the problem. He checked me out and it turns out to be my sacrial bone (tailbone area) was more less loose and the legiments were stretched causing it to shift my hips and pull my groin musclues and butt (for lack of being able to spell the other words) musclues and putting presser on the part of the spain above the sacrium and causing my leg pain. For I long time before finding out what was actually wrong I took Ibeprophin(sp), asprin, Precription drugs and anything else I could think of to ease the pain and all that done for me was mess up my stomach and give me alot of acid reflux I quit taking all meds unless the pain is bad and I can' t walk at all because now every time I take some thing for pain I get reflux so bad I can' t stand it. I am NO dr but I would avoid meds as much as possible. Now I see a ciropractor(sp I don' t spell well as if you couldn' t notice) every few months or as the pain calls for, The back specailist is the one who told me to find a good ciropractor were I live and see if he can help after I got done seeing his phyical theropist. It took me over 6 years!!!! to fine out what was really wrong and I still have pain to this day but I want to avoid surgery but like aurthor I can only sleep about 6hrs a night with having alot of pain but my problems are really not the bad compared to others but when it is happing to you it is what you have to deal with not the other person. I hope you find releif and don' t give up until you do.

BOWFANATIC

I had back surgery last year and it' s been great since then. What type of back problem do you have?
If it happens to be a herniated disc , I cant reccomend surgery strongly enough! Dont let it go so long that it (pain) moves into your leg , like I did!

atlasman

Pain pills don' t get rid of pain. The pain is still there........you just can' t feel it. Pain is from damaged tissue......period. The pain that you should be feeling would prevent you from doing things that further damage that area. Do yourself a favor and try to find a better solution.

Look into the McKensie excercises and see if they help you at all.


A lifetime of pain pills and muscle relaxers will destroy your liver and kidneys so it is really not a great way to go.

Use the meds to get through life until you figure out a better option. Don' t depend on them for a permanent fix.


Best of luck

thundermug

Yes, its tellin me " He you! Watcha doin' to me?"
If it take 1 relaxer I get no releif, if I take 1 pain I get no relief. If I take 1/2 of each I get relief.
I got a 5 pack!LOL!
I gotta cousin who had that done. he is now disabled, and takes pills so strong. At the Christmas party(I drove 5hours , don' t get a volvo) I was hurting so bad he gave me one of his pills and I was a drooling, useless, I don' t know what![X(]
Florida
I think I could write that... Seriously, who wrote it?

thundermug

My L5 disc has herniated and collapsed causing the vertebra to rub bone on bone at the facet joint. I' m getting spurs, and they are resting at an angle and the muscle has tightened up to attempt to straighten the 2 vertebra. The disc has deteriorated over the years and will continue to get worse. I was told that surgery is not a good option for me at this point. Eventually it will when the disc has deteriorated more. My pain started over 10 years ago and has gotten worse as time went by. this winter was when a became a crybaby.
It' s been found that it is from and old injury in the early 80' s.
I went to a house to wire a new central air handler (a/c-heat) and the wire had fallen down thru the floor, so I crawled under the house to push it back up.
As I crawled I came to a flexible duct. I raised it up and crawled under it, I got to another one and did the same thimg, I found a third and as I raised it up and crawled under it the first one fell down behind my feet.
I raised the 4th one and came face to face with a possum, with baby possums crawling on it.
NOW if you' ve never been face to face with a wild possum that you startled, then you have no idea what it looked like! All I can say is it is one ferocious animal! It was inches from me!
I dropped the duct and tried backing up but a duct was behind my feet and I couldn' t move. The possum came under the 4th duct after me with it' s huge teeth and was inches away from my face! I spun around and crawled as fast as I could with this possum attacking my boots. As I neared the edge of the house I thought I could stand up to run, and WHAM! my lower back hits he edge of the house!
It knocked me to the ground, I couldn' t catch my breath, and my legs were tingling. When I caught my breath and tried to stand my legs were rubbery. Eventually they were fine.

If I had been smart and not let that macho attitude get in the way, I should have went to the hospital but NOOO I didn' t and now I suffer.

I have a dime sized scar on my back, that is how we know what has caused this.

jgttechjunkie

Go to amazon.com and search for the paperback " Oh, My Aching Back" by Leon Root and I think two others.

Sounds to me though that the problems some of you guys might have are much less routine than the typical person I have met with a " bad baqck" .

In my case I fell about 8 feet flat on my back. I had pains shooting down both of my legs at the time and unbearable pain. Ambulance took me to hospital, where an idiot intern had me standing up in no time. Walked out of there, met my friends in a bar and was very macho about it. Gradually the pain went away. About two weeks later I played a game of squash and back came the pains, exactly the same as the first time. Spent 10 days in the hospital flat on my back, and had two doctors (a neurologist and an orthopedic guy) arguing over whether to operate or not. I remember the orthopedic doctor terrifying me: " you have pain running down both legs. That means the disk is pressing on the center. That means you are in danger of losing control of all functions below the waist. Our window of opportunity for surgery would be very small if that happened. Do you know what that means?" I was young then, and said that I didn' t realize that I had much control of things below my waist anyway. All I remembered was that however bad the pain was it had disappeared once and I expected it would disappear again. He sent me a new intern to " discuss my operation" . I was really rude to her, said I wasn' t going to have an operation - she got all red in the face and flustered, tried to explain the benefits of fusing. I was very suspicious.
(This was in Canada so the cost of the care wasn' t an issue.)

So for past 25 years I have had maybe two or three more 10 day sessions in bed recovery, but otherwise it is controllable. I still ski, but very gently (I don' t think I have had one fall while skiing in those 25 years). When I am driving I never do a " shoulder check" to see if a car is coming (did that once and got locked into a position it took me days to get out of).

Obviously my problem was not as serious as those described elsewhere.