I Want a New Back

One summer, of 1995 to be exact, when I was 15&16 years old, out of the blue almost, my back started hurting, really badly. Sharp stabbing pains. So my mom put me on her insurance and took me to an Osteopath. They did a fluoroscopy video thingy, and saw that my alignment on almost every vertebrae was out of whack. So they did therapy on me. 

They'd first wrap me in a heated towel for 10 minutes to loosen the muscles, then they'd crack me (what they call "adjust") and then they'd apply the Jack Hammer (that's what the doctor called it, I don't know it's technical term) which would knock my veterbrae back into place. It made it hurt even worse, but they told me in time, it would feel better. 

But.. after going to therapy 3 times a week for 3 months that whole summer, my mom's insurance ran out for it, and I had to stop going. It did feel better though by then, enough to not really bother me as much. 

 

Cut to 2020. We are working remote from home, and there's nowhere to put any desk or anything to sit at for work so we stand at a kitchen island with our laptops. After about 2 months, my back started to ache. It got progressively worse, and a few times I would accidentally tweak it where it would be a sharp pain in my lumbar. 

After moving to STL, we are standing at the same rolling kitchen island cart, but this time it's on concrete floors. So I put therapeutic arch support gel inserts in my shoes when I stand up to work. But my back is now completely fucked.

Every morning I wake out of bed and it's a dull ache, that subsides 40% with 3 Tylenol taken every 4 hours. It aches and aches while I work, so I put on my back brace snugly, which only relives the pain for a short time, maybe 20 minutes. So I put an ice pack on it and strap it around me to relieve the pain which only works maybe 30 minutes. Back and forth like this, all day.

 

And then yesterday, my back ached especially badly. I went to get ready to run on the treadmill, and as I took off my pajama pants, SNAP! Something in my lower lumbar decided it had had enough, and an extremely sharp pain coursed through the area. Now it hurts to move in certain ways. I put a heating pad to it, and ice, and that just made it feel stiff and sore. 

I already have spondylosis in my neck (osteoarthritis) which makes it incredibly stiff, and, in the cold weather, very sore.

I figured by writing this down I could stop thinking about it, and focusing on the pain. Maybe if I just get it all out... get it off of my chest, it will maybe feel better. Like I have the whole story down, no need to think about it. 

We'll see. I know it works for anxiety, maybe it works for pain too. 

I'm not keen on seeing a doctor because I don't have enough $, even with insurance. We got to be looking for houses/apartments to move to soon, in Indy, so we don't have all the money to spend on doctor appointments for my back. I am planning on asking my upcoming GP PCP about maybe cortisone shots or something, we'll see if that helps. She might not though because one wrong move and it's bye-bye to the spinal cord. I'll still ask, though.  

So there it is. I really hope doing stretches, taking tylenol, and icing/heating will eventually help.