Super Long Post Explaining My Back Pain

It snowed so much yesterday that my bird tree is touching the ground and there is NO way I will get out of my driveway. Love the snow plows and all, but damn they trap me in Farmhouse Villa.

(Today is my sister's 38th birthday and Kira's 36th birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY GIRLS! I LOVE YOU! I'm enjoying getting old with you!)

I went to my first PT appointment on Friday. After doing some very interesting tests, my doctor concluded that I have a herniated disk. I told him I was NOT interested in expensive testing to figure out what was wrong until we tried some other options. He agreed -- he's NOT into expensive testing either. I scored with this doc. (Also, he's easy on the eyes, which is nice. I mean, aren't all PT doctors? I know Sea Wee is HAWT.)

The most interesting test he did was having me lie down on my back on a table, pulling up my leg to up to his shoulder height, and then pushing down the toes of my foot as far as they would go. Then he had me push my chin down to my chest while he was holding my leg/foot like that. When we did this? OUCH! The right side of my spine lit up like a Christmas tree. Apparently, when you put your body in this position, you're pulling your spinal cord taut like a string. This way, you can tell where the pain is coming from. We'd already determined the basic area, but this helped us to pinpoint it. Doing this exercise on my left side didn't hurt as much. I could feel it but not like on the right side. So the herniation must be coming from the right side.

The doctor pulled out his handy, plastic spinal column/hips model and explained herniation to me. In between the disks in your spine, you have squishy areas filled with water, nerves, and other squishy stuff that keeps you from rubbing your spine disks against each other. Something like that. When you have an injury, some of this stuff can pooch out of one side (he even had a little red pooching area on the fake spine to show what it looked like). So when you bend over, you end up PINCHING this herniation, which is why it hurts so very much. And because this is all happening, all of the nerves and muscles and everything else in that area gets all p*ssed off, too, which causes the pain to travel a bit. This explains why I woke up two nights in a row CRYING (literally CRYING) out of my sleep because the FRONT of my hips hurt. It turns out we have nerves that run from our spines along the front of our hips. We also have some nerves that run out of the bottom of the spinal cord area.

Blondie: Oh, maybe those are the nerves that have been bothering me so much.

Doctor: No, those nerves don't go very far... if you know what I mean.

Blondie: Oh. Uh huh.

I *kinda* knew what he meant, but now I'm so curious -- do those nerves to go your pooper or your private parts?

Anyway, I told him when I first came in that I can't bend forward at all right now without feeling like I'm literally going to break myself in half. Not good. Due to that fact and our tests, we figure the herniation is probably pooching out of the front of my spine, so it's best to not lean that way (there goes brushing my teeth, feeding my cats, or really doing ANYTHING). He then gave me the most basic of exercises to try -- leaning backwards a little bit 10 times in a row. It still hurt. He said in my case, my height is working against me. He said that because I'm so tall, my back is being compressed a lot by just standing or sitting because of the weight of my TALL body. Note, he did not say I was overweight, just tall.

This flashed me back to when I first went to an occupational therapist back in 2001 for my back injury at the book store. In that case, the a$$hat just didn't want to treat me, so he said, and I quote: "You're just a big woman, and big women hurt themselves. You probably did this in your sleep." Um, no. I did it at work. And I have suffered for it for my entire adult life. (Never bend over and pick up an 80 lb box the wrong way. You'll break yourself.) Oh, and at the time I weighed roughly 150 lbs and I was 6' tall. Regular BMI for a 6' tall woman? Roughly 200 lbs. Just sayin'.

My new and amazing doctor had me lie down on his table with my arms on a pillow and just lie there like that for a while. We chatted about life, my tattoo (I had on half-sleeves so he asked about it), and I encouraged him to find me a nice single man (I saw his wedding ring flashing at me, of course). This activity was loosening up my lower back. Then he had me prop myself up on my elbows for about 5 seconds. The more I repeated this, the better I felt. Then he asked me if I would like the electrodes and an ice pillow? Yes, yes I would. So he gently put on the electrodes, placed an ice pillow on me, shut off the lights, and left me there for 10 minutes. I was in heaven.

I will be going back twice next week and then we'll re-evaluate. He said I could possibly have a slight fracture, but he really thinks it's just a herniation. I had told my doctor my history of wonking out my back about once a year and ending up in the ER twitching and moaning in pain. He explained that if back pain lasts longer than two weeks, it's almost never muscular. In this case, the injury happened on Christmas Day, so that's waaaaay too long for a tweaked muscle. I knew something was really wrong. I just knew it. I could feel it in my soul. Damn.

And now for "How Blondie Hurt Her Back."

It's time to share this story with my readers because it involves Something Horribly Stupid Happening On Me -- or In Me, I guess. On Christmas morning, Little was wanting to open her gifts and everyone was taking a really long time to get their sh*t together. I decided to help her out.

Pa was in his bedroom getting dressed, so I ran from the kitchen to his room along the brand new and very fuzzy and (apparently) super slippery carpet at my parents' house. As I got closer to his doorway, I realized the light was off. I could see the outline of my father -- he was tucking in a shirt. He had on jeans and a shirt, but since I could hardly see him, the little bit of shirt that was sticking out of the fly of his jeans looked like, well, you do the math. TO BE CLEAR, my father was NOT undressed. He was NOT exposed in any way. But my mind played a trick on me so I thought I was seeing something I should not see and I stopped cold on the slippery carpet. This led to a banana peel fall, where my feet literally went right out from underneath me and my entire body was temporarily horizontal in the air. Thinking I was a cat, I twisted to the right.

BAM! I hit, and I hit HARD.

I landed on my right hip. I laid there for a few minutes, moaning in pain. I'm pretty sure the whole house shook when I landed. No one saw this except my father, so no one understood what had happened. Like any good back injury, it didn't really hurt until later that night. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone why I stopped short like that, so I'm pretty sure even Pa doesn't know... well, he does now. (Hi, Pa!) I'm only sharing this because so many people keep asking me what the heck I did and are worried they are going to move/lift the same way I did and blow their backs out. So rest assured, unless you are running full speed ahead on slippery carpet and then stopping because the lighting tricks you into thinking you're seeing something that IS NOT REAL, you should be fine.

Back to "Regular Rambling."

Also? I have scoliosis. I was diagnosed with it by that first occupational therapist, but since I didn't believe anything he said, I asked my new doc for his opinion. It turns out that I do stand a bit crooked, and I have a slightly curved lower spine. Random fact learned from new doc -- depending on which hand is dominant, you will probably have that shoulder a bit lower than your other shoulder. My left shoulder is slightly lower because of this. I have such an informative doctor. PT was fascinating.

My doctor wants me to do the exercises 5x a day until I see him again on Tuesday. He said if I do this, I should feel MUCH better by then. I didn't get these exercises done a whole 5x yesterday -- Bad Blondie. So I'll do better today. Hopefully, by opening up my spine in the opposite direction, I can encourage the herniated squishy stuff to go back where it belongs. Or something like that.

Most likely, because this is how my life goes, my insurance company won't pay for this treatment. (I'll just believe that for now so if they do it can be a pleasant surprise.) But I'm willing to shell out the money now because I'm only 34 years old. I can't let my back fail me now and pay for it well into my little old lady years. And I've promised to take care of myself, so it's my job to make sure I get in to see the doctor, do the exercises, and make my life as pain-free as possible. My uncle is now something like 65. He had surgery last year for a knee injury that happened when he was in his early-20s. Watching him go through all that reminded me to take care of myself now in preparation for the future. I don't want to be in pain if there's a way to fix it. So hopefully, these exercises will fix me up. If not, we'll go from there.

So, my dear readers, I will hopefully be able to STOP venting and complaining about my back pain soon. Thank you for your encouragement and warm wishes throughout this endeavor. And, if nothing else, take away this lesson: Do not run on soft, new carpet.