Quarantine and chill and kindness chatty clubhouse: Jump in and join the conversation! All is welcome!

[Pea-n-Me]

That's basically how it has been explained to me. The cushion is gone. My problem at the moment seems to be L5 to S1. The pain is almost phantom in that it can appear to be just in the soft tissue of your leg and then later it has moved to another area. I seem to have about 3 spots that are getting the nerve reaction this time. An interesting thing about the nerve pain: my Doc suspended my statin for cholesterol for the next week because he says the statin absorbs enzymes in the nerve area that could help mitigate the pain. I don't know if there's really anything to that but I trust this doctor and his practice. I've been his patient since the early 90ties and he's guided me to wellness in many ways over the years. He keeps up with the new stuff and he takes his time and listens to you.

The first time years ago that he saw images of my spine he called me at home in a bit of a tizzy because based on what he saw, I should have been in pain. I wasn't at that time. I find that movement, exercise and therapy are usually best for me, but I will be asking him about discectomy. I'd heard the term but didn't know how it was done.

Sounds a bit like when I had shoulder pain the orthopedic surgeon went in arthroscopically and trimmed the bursa. Tiny incissions and outpatient surgery.

Almost time for my pain med.
At least with the med I'm taking I'm getting sleep. A few hours at a time.

When they initially mentioned surgery for DH, I was against it. As a student I’d watched a spine surgery and it was a nightmare. I did not want that for him. But then there came a time when they said he had to move on to surgery as he’d reached the max on the steroid shots. Ugh. Well a very long time had passed since I’d seen spinal surgery (decades) and new techniques had been perfected. Being minimally invasive, it was nothing like the surgery I saw. There was literally a spot on his back about the size of the side of a dime or less, that was it. (Previously I’d seen the surgeon drill out the actual spine with a hand saw. He dropped the bone by accident and had to drill another!) As I said before, we wished we’d done it sooner. But live and learn.

I hope the statin trick works, let me know! He sounds like a good doctor. They may not want to go right to discectomy if they think a shot could help, idk. But it never hurts to have a consult, either, then you can think about your options. At the very least it’s good to know that’s available. What was interesting is that the Interventional Radiologist who does DH’s shots (same guy for years) can always tell where the problem is just based on symptoms and manipulation of the foot. He’d tell DH to try not to move his foot (and DH is a strong guy) but he could manipulate it every which way despite DH trying to not let him. Always a laugh about that. But once the shot settles in (it can take days - once we were actually at Disney when DH was painfully sitting on a bench when he felt a “pop” in his back, the medicine from the shot he’d had the day before we left broke through and he felt immediate relief after that) then there’s control over the foot again. Obviously there still needs to be an MRI to be precise, but they really know exactly where to do the shot, as well.

There’s another thing DH got at PT, it’s a big “roll” that he lays on and rolls his back on it, which helps separate the vertebrae giving it more space and relieving some of the pain. But I think that has to be prescribed.