Too Young for Back Problems

My mother has had back problems most of her adult life, stemming from a herniated disc that she was diagnosed with before I was born.  (This is a condition where your discs squish between your vertebrae and shoot tissue all over your very sensitive nerves. It hurts a whole lot).  While she manages to stay as strong as an ox by stubbornly gardening her entire condo complex, she struggles to rise from a seated position or walk on uneven ground. Since my youth, I remember her yelping and reaching around to her lower back every time she stood up.  I prayed I wouldn't ever know the pain she endured.  

(spoiler alert!  I did, soon enough.)

When I was in the third grade, I remember our P.E. teachers giving us our scoliosis test. This involves simply bending over in front of your teacher while someone looks at your back to see if everything looks even on both sides. I remember being asked to repeat the test. I remember them quietly discussing what they saw with each other. I remember them saying "it's fine--it's within the range."  And so I was dismissed, and went back to recess where I excelled at the monkey bars.

At age fourteen, I remember standing up from a seated position, and feeling a pinch in my lower back. I was tempted to yelp and throw my hand to my back, but I did not want to betray my feelings (more on this later).  I turned to my mother and casually mentioned, "my back hurts."  

"You're too young to have back problems!" she exclaimed. There it was. My spine's curvature was 'within range' and I was too young to have back problems. So I didn't.

Except that I did. But since I had already been versed in keeping my feelings to myself (expressing emotions wasn't really a 'thing' in my young life--"crying will only give you a headache" was our mantra), I pretended that my back didn't hurt. I pretended for a pretty long time.

And it didn't hurt *all* the time. But it did hurt sometimes. And then it hurt some more. And then it hurt some more.

In my late twenties, I started to experience a symptom called 'sciatica' (also known as 'radicular pain', or 'ridiculous pain' as I like to call it).  The pain in my lower back was constant, and now I was feeling a shooting pain down the side of my leg, right where the stripe on a pair of tuxedo pants is located (some people experience the pain down the back or front of their leg, but it's the same symptom, related to a different part of the spine). 

I finally decided that maybe I should put my health insurance to work and see a medical professional about this ongoing discomfort.

I went to a chiropractor. He told me that I likely had a herniated disc. I held back my tears (crying will only give you a headache) and continued to seek treatment with him for several months as I lived with the chronic pain.

And then one day it got worse. So, so much worse. One day, I woke up unable to walk. The nerve impingement was so intense, my leg crumpled regularly under my weight. I could stagger around the one-bedroom apartment with the help of walls and furniture. I missed two weeks of work.  While trying to boil tea, I knocked the kettle of scalding water down with me because I couldn't stand long enough to pour it into my cup. I could barely sleep, as the pain woke me every hour. One night, when I could no longer stem the flow of tears or hold back the screams in my sleep, my husband insisted that we go to the E.R.

"We think you have a herniated disc" they told me.

Well, DUH.

They referred me to a neurosurgeon and gave me Aleve and a Lidocaine shot.  I was in excruciating pain (neither of these drug treatments had any effect) and I was horrified that my next step was to visit a surgeon.

I had reached a point of no return. I could not live with this pain. I reached out to my GP.  He referred me to a pain management specialist, who gave me a Cortisone shot. This bought me about six months of function, during which time I sought treatment through acupuncture, chiropractic care, physical therapy, and psychotherapy (did you know that holding your feelings in can exacerbate physical ailments? Maybe crying can actually cure a headache).

But the pain started to creep back, because a Cortisone shot is a temporary measure. Shortly after my thirtieth birthday (and shortly after an MRI revealed not only the suspected herniated disc between two of my lumbar vertebrae, but also a mild case of scoliosis--woops!), I visited three different neurosurgeons who all gave me three different recommendations: the first insisted that I absolutely needed surgery, the second stated that I might be totally fine without it, and the third said it was entirely up to me--only I knew if I was in enough pain to play my 'Ace Card'.

I did play my Ace card, with that third surgeon. He performed a laminectomy and discectomy. When I woke up from surgery, I was already in less pain than I was when I had been living with the herniated disc. I begged the nurses to stop giving me Percoset (the hallucinations I had on that stuff were nothing short of terrifying--it was election season and I had been singing a lot of sacred music--John Kerry and Sarah Palin in Flagrante Delicto set to church hymns were enough to keep me off opiates for good).

Long story short (too late), I had a herniated disc for no apparent reason at a rather young age, possibly due (at least in part) to mild scoliosis, genetics, and/or luck. The good news is that since the surgery, I have been able to regain all of my prior athletic prowess and more. The crummy news is that I'm currently living with at least one more herniated disc, and that this would be far from the last of my health woes before age 40 (and who knows what lies beyond! Life is nothing if not interesting).

This coming September will mark the 10-year anniversary of that surgery. Maybe it'll be time to re-ink old Herman, my butterfly guardian angel who watches over the little scar on my lower back.

To this day, I have not experienced a pain as debilitating or demoralizing as what I went through during the worst of the nerve impingement.

I highly recommend not herniating a disc.

image sources:

https://patch.com/new-york/longbeach/bp--back-pain-its-probably-not-your-herniated-discs

http://www.ivline.org/2010/10/clinical-examination-of-spine.html

http://healthandfoodcorner.com/sciatica-back-pain-take-remedy-youll-never-suffer/