Back pain overview

From early 2016 in­to 2017, I had a de­bil­it­at­ing ex­per­i­ence with back pain. It de­veloped from a minor tweak in my hip to pain so bad I that I couldn’t walk more than a few feet, sleep through the night, or con­cen­trate on work.

I wrote a num­ber of blogs to work through the emo­tions, keep my friends and fam­ily up to date, and share what I learned with oth­ers. To sim­pli­fy the story and re­com­mend­a­tions, I’m sum­mar­iz­ing the en­tire situ­ation here.

My current status

After my second back sur­gery in May 2017, I’ve fully re­covered.

By fully re­covered, I mean…

  • I can walk, run, cycle, ski, snow­board, and even moun­tain bike without pain. This is amaz­ing.
  • Weird little pain spikes hap­pen now and then. Pulses some­times travel up and down the nerves in my legs. My feet feel like I have per­man­ent wrinkles in my socks, even when bare­foot. Most of the time, I barely no­tice. Some­times, these trig­ger pain memor­ies that give me chills.
  • I have to stretch for at least 15 minutes a day, and I do some kind of strength work in the gym or my gar­age every day. If I don’t, those weird little pains be­come more no­tice­able and muscles from my waist to my ankles will start knot­ting up.

My doc­tor told me that I should be good for at least ten years or so after sur­gery, after which some pa­tients de­vel­op arth­rit­is or oth­er spin­al is­sues. We’ll see.

Recommendations for other back pain patients

Not that I’m an au­thor­ity.

But, what I learned:

  • About 80% of back pain clears up “by it­self” over a peri­od of months. That is, it gets bet­ter over time, per­haps re­lated to the ac­tu­al treat­ment you try. This is ba­sic­ally about things in your back (your discs) mov­ing back in­to non-pain­ful po­s­i­tion.
  • The vast ma­jor­ity of the stuff you see on You­tube about back pain is ut­ter bull­shit.
  • If you have ser­i­ous back pain, go see your phys­i­cian and try to get an MRI as quickly as you can. See­ing what’s go­ing on in­side with your discs will make a ma­jor dif­fer­ence in the treat­ment strategy.
  • Phys­ic­al ther­apy can make a dif­fer­ence, or can make it much, much worse. If you go to see a PT, find someone who has ac­tu­al spine-re­lated cre­den­tials.
  • Things that did not work for me, but may work for you: cortisone shots, 3 out of 4 of my phys­ic­al ther­ap­ists, yoga, pain med­ic­a­tions, chiro­pract­ors, me­did­a­tion, ig­nor­ing it.
  • The thing that did work for me, twice: sur­gery.

My story, briefly

Here are all the blogs I’ve writ­ten on my back pain saga.

What happened:

  • In 2016, I star­ted to de­vel­op back pain. The real mys­tery was what was caus­ing it. We spent months try­ing to fig­ure this out as it got worse and worse. Noth­ing helped, and we found no cause.
  • In late 2016, I had my first back sur­gery for a routine her­ni­ated disc. We thought that’s all that was go­ing on. That sur­gery went well, and for a few months we thought I was cured and on the road to re­cov­ery.
  • A few months later, in early 2017, the symp­toms and pain were back, but on the oth­er side of my body.
  • This led to my doc­tor to identi­fy the prob­lem as a much more rare con­di­tion re­lated to the po­s­i­tion­ing and spa­cing of my fa­cet joint and my L4 and L5 ver­teb­rae. The only solu­tion was a spin­al fu­sion.
  • I had that more ser­i­ous sur­gery in May 2017. There were some close calls in that sur­gery and it re­vealed a more ser­i­ous un­der­ly­ing con­di­tion with my nerves, but it went well.
  • And since then, I’ve re­covered (which took a long time) and am liv­ing al­most as if it was nev­er an is­sue.

Sometimes…

… when I leap off a wall, shred a mogul run, or launch my moun­tain bike off a jump, I real­ize how in­cred­ibly for­tu­nate I am to be able to move at all, much less to be as act­ive as I am.