Round 2 of surgery!

[nanaki333]

Seems having a desk job gives a person a very high rate of getting ruptured discs. I just had surgery last June for l4, l5, s1 getting fused. Been in a lot of pain again recently and my doctor ignored my cries for help. Went to an actual spine center and they did a myleogram (talk about uncomfortable!) + CT scan and it showed l3 was ruptured. They're starting steroid/cordizone injections every other week for a month + physical therapy, but they don't have high hopes for it. Mainly just doing it so insurance won't bitch about another MRI and then surgery.

The new back quack I was seeing asked what I did for a living and he just shook his head. I plop my ass down in my chair all day, only getting up to use the bathroom and get water. I even eat at my desk. Says easily more than half the people going off the top of his head coming in to that place, have similar injuries all had jobs that had them sitting on their asses all day. I'm supposed to get a nice lumbar chair for home and work if I can, or start standing and working whenever possible, and taking frequent breaks to walk around.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

Did you have an event where you actually injured your discs (lifting with a significantly rounded back)? Sitting, specifically with poor posture (in lumbar flexion), does displace the nucleus pulposus (the gel within the disc) backward. However, it doesn't typically rupture without some form of event. Talk to your PT about postural re-training, core re-training, and learning how to maintain a neutral spine statically and dynamically. You can get a lot from PT if your PT really knows what they're doing. If you start to maintain a better posture (and if your PT utilizes good techniques), you can actually start to re-locate the nucleus pulposus and allow the disc to heal on its own. That's only if you avoid significant lumbar flexion though.

 

[nanaki333]

first thing that set it off was i just woke up one morning in tons of pain and couldn't get up. mother and step-bro had to come to my house and get me to the urgent care place. i had a really old and decrepit mattress.

when i went to PT after my first surgery, they didn't do squat for me. i was still in a lot of pain. i decided to get worked on by a friend that was a massage therapist and start lifting light weights very controlled and i felt worlds better in just a few days than they did in over a month.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

first thing that set it off was i just woke up one morning in tons of pain and couldn't get up. mother and step-bro had to come to my house and get me to the urgent care place. i had a really old and decrepit mattress.

when i went to PT after my first surgery, they didn't do squat for me. i was still in a lot of pain. i decided to get worked on by a friend that was a massage therapist and start lifting light weights very controlled and i felt worlds better in just a few days than they did in over a month.

Is there any way you can talk to your surgeon to get the name of a good PT/clinic? In every profession, there's both high and low level practitioners. If you find a good one, you can definitely see significant gains in function and pain reduction.

Honestly, with disc dysfunction, the PT should evaluate your posture, re-train it; initiate core coordination, strength, and endurance program; traction you to reduce your symptoms; mobilize your spine if you lack extension; and a lot more. If you don't have a PT that does that, you should definitely look elsewhere.

 

[DeckardBlade]

Poor posture can be a killer, we're really not meant to be in a seated position for hours and hours on end. I only wish that the importance was hammered into me at a much earlier age as with any bad habit, they are hard to break.

Stretching, correcting posture, taking miniature breaks throughout the work day have all been immensely helpful for me. Granted I don't have anything ruptured.

Don't know what the PT did or didn't do for you but if the massage therapist helped it may be because you have some muscles getting locked into spasm from sitting so much, this can cause all sorts of other muscles to compensate for those which only worsens your issue.

If it makes you feel any better (probably wouldn't) I was misdiagnosed having a hernia just due to a combination of muscles getting locked into spasm. This wouldn't be a big issue if it didn't take around 3 years and a lot of money (CAT scans are not cheap!) to finally get that figured out. Despite being determined by three separate surgeons that I did not have a hernia I was given 3 options none of which were all that satisfactory; exploratory surgery, take 4 ibuprofen 3 times a day, or live with it.

Long story short, I found out I had my QL/Piriformis/Psoas...probably a few other things I can't recall were so locked up my right leg was 2 inches shorter than the left and my Psoas was distending out from my lower abdomen which was what was leading the surgeons to think it was an inguinal hernia.

Went to a Naprapath for a while and she did enough work to get me back in business and provided me exercises/stretches and postural retraining to help me prevent having those issues in the future.

Given my experiences I generally opt for PT/body work of some sort before heading to the surgeon but I fully admit I'm biased based on my own experiences.

 

[CFP]

What would a surgeon have done for that issue, Deckard?

 

[DeckardBlade]

What would a surgeon have done for that issue, Deckard?

Since it wasn't found on the CAT scan he believed it could had been too small to have been viewed on it. He mentioned if after getting in there they didn't find anything they could still put in a meshing for support.