New Core

I added and changed some of my previous core exercises.  This is what I have been doing this week:

1) bridges x20
I did the full yoga bridge things for a few days.  Yesterday, I tried and failed because I hurt too badly and my form was off.  So I did the mini-bridges.  I thought it would be better to do the easier ones right, rather than do the more difficult ones wrong.

2) crunch/leg lifts/banana x20 each
I've still been doing these.  They are getting easier.

3) reverse crunch/reverse leg extension/supermans x20 each
I did full on 12 reverse leg extensions in a row before my back spasmed.  That's way up from the 3 or 4 I started with!

4) Donkey Pee
x40 alternating sides (20 each side)

5) Side Bridges x20 each side

6) Pikes x20

7) Ball Roll x20

8) Spinal Balance
x40 alternating sides (20 each side)

Also, yoga'd twice last week.  I skipped yesterday and rolled around on the floor in pain instead.  Today, I have an appointment with the Good Doc.  Tomorrow I see the specialist...finally.

Dear Adam,

Your witch doctor hurts me.  Also, he is apparently interested in what you were wearing yesterday.

After visiting with CC and lots of the boys at work who have back owies, I was quite sure that CC was completely right about my back.  Why wouldn't he be, right?  It's the old SI joint after all.  Yesterday I visited GD and spoke with him about my revelations.  He agreed and explained that when we got the MRI results, he did not want to aggressively work on the si joint without being sure I wasn't having disc pain.  Apparently, in GD's language "I have no disc pain" is code for "please hurt me as much as possible."  After ultrasounding my back/hip, he dug into my hip and glutes.  There may have even been a flying back elbow move thrown in for fun.  He stuck on the electrodes, zapped me and ended with a little TLC for my discs.  Oh wait, he then ended by adjusting my si joint.

While all this was going on, we had a grand ol' time.  Seriously, I've never had more fun at a hospital than talking to this guy while he tortures me.  He told me a story about our bud, Adam, who referred me to GD.  Evidently GD was being funny that morning and sent Adam a text:  "Hey Sexy, what are you wearing?"  Except that he had misplaced that Adam's phone number and sent it to another Adam, with whom he doesn't have that sort of relationship.  Oops!  Other Adam didn't respond, and we decided that was kind of crappy.  I've received/sent a couple of messages intended for someone else, and it's kind of necessary to acknowledge them.  That way, both parties know a mistake was made and silent awkwardness about it can be replaced with laughter.

Next Thursday I visit the pain dude.  Even though it's been a long wait and there haven't been improvements, I'm glad we finally got the pain narrowed down to the actual problem.

So how do I feel today?  I was hoping yesterday was my miracle cure day, that the adjustment would make it all better.  Suddenly, I would be able to skip and jump and reach for my toes without pain.  Sadly (and as you could probably guess), this is not the case.  In fact, I feel just awful today.  The kind of awful that I would happily commit to recliner-land, never moving from my favorite comfy chair.  However, being the responsible adult that sometimes I wish I weren't, I thought being still, confined, and not moving would probably not be the best idea in the long run.  So I dragged my butt to yoga.  It hurt.  Then I went grocery shopping.  It frustrated me.  I came home and put groceries away.  Originally, I had awakened this morning with grand schemes for what I felt like cooking.  I haven't felt like cooking lately, so I was excited.  Following my morning activities (punctuated by pain, naturally), all I felt like doing was taking a nap.  So I did.  It was glorious.  By the time, Hubs got up (he works nights), I still didn't feel like cooking.  Luckily, I felt obligated to.  I whipped up some chicken breast stuffed with bacon/spinach/cheese and covered with jalapeno cream sauce.  Afterward, I was quite happy with my decision to make dinner because I felt like I had won a small battle in this war between me and the back pain.  Or hip joint pain.  Whatever.

Core-Slash-Ab Exercises

If you don't read the title and giggle, it's because your husband and his best (dude) friend don't do P90X ab ripper and make jokes about it all the time.

I'm going to tell you what core exercises I'm doing this week.  The piddly little ones GD gave me, and the ones C.C. also showed me.  I should make a video of me doing them, but there would be too much hot pink/lime green/spandex, and I would be laughing the entire time.

1) bridges
On back, knees bent, feet on floor.  Lift hips to make straight line from knees to shoulders.

2) mini-crunches
On back, knees bent, feet on floor.  Mini crunch.

3) leg lifts
On back, hands under tailbone.  Lift straight legs.

4) v-ups
Mini-crunch and leg lift at the same time.  The guy in the video goes a lot higher than what I can.

5) mini-back extensions
Lie on belly.  Lift chest off ground.

6) mini-reverse back extensions
Lie on belly.  Lift legs off ground.

7) mini superman lifts
Lie on belly.  Lift chest and legs off ground.

8) donkey pee
On all fours.  Donkey kick a leg behind you (knee bent, thigh parallel to floor, foot parallel to ceiling).  From there, move leg out to side like a dog peeing.  Put that leg down and do the other side.  Donkey kick + dog pee = donkey pee.  This is from C.C., so blame him for the name.

9) booty shaker
C.C. called this the tail wagger or something like that.  On all fours, scrunch your side and pull your butt and head toward each other.  It helps to look for your butt over your shoulder.  Then look at the other side.

Oh, and in all of the exercises, you have to keep your core tight.  Not like you are straining or anything, but not sagging around everywhere.  Sometimes I forget on the last 2.

I've been doing 20 of each exercise, one set in the morning and one at night.  Some of them hurt me more than others, so I rest during those sets (mostly just reverse back extension and superman).  I'll be able to do 4 or 5 reps, then get a spasm, shriek a little, and have to rest for a bit before doing 4 or 5 more.  Hey, it's better than when I started out a few days ago and could only do 3 at a time.  As they get easier, I can increase the range of motion and then add the swiss ball to increase difficulty.  Right now I'm working on being gentle.  grrr.

My favorites

Sometimes I meet certain people (or as I get to know said people better), and I think "So&So is my favorite."  Today I had two favorites: Good Doc (G.D.) and my favorite crossfit coach (C.C.).  He's always my favorite though.

I visited GD this morning after my stupid dogs kept me awake all night.  After I had fallen asleep, Sonny barked twice.  They never bark at night, so it kind of freaked me out.  I had to grab some defense and clear the house.  Later, I awoke to the sound of licking.  It had to have been the loudest licking in the history of licking because I heard it though my ear plugs.  I yelled at them, and Hubs let them out of the room.  When Hubs came to bed, Lucy stuck her nose in my back and woke me up again.  I wouldn't be opposed to moving their happy little doggy beds outside the room.  Somebody else is though.

GD said I looked very yellow.  I think he was talking about my energy which is kind of different and whatever.  He ultrasounded me and did some flexion and distraction.  Then he evaluated my pt exercises.  Apparently I sucked at them, but he gave me a new one to do.  Lie on the ol' back and lift the hips up to make a bridge.

As I was about to walk out, GD said something like, "I only gave you one new exercise, right?"

"Yeah.  The bridge thing."

"Right.  Because you didn't do your other ones last week."

This is my artistic rendition of how I felt about that comment:

*By the way, I was wearing a headwrap/band thing because I had just rolled out of bed and it keeps my hair sticking out in a similar direction and not all in my eyeballs.  Serious face.  I full-on protested because GD basically called me a liar.  I hate liars.  With a little head-weaving confrontation, he backed right down though.  I couldn't believe he accused me of not doing my stuff!  I busted my butt (which hurt like a hot knife slicing through it at times) to get all my stupid leg lifts and kegels in!  I should have gotten extra credit for going to yoga and freaking learning how to stretch my hamstrings in ways that don't hurt my back!

So how is GD still a fave?  It was a joke gone wrong.  He really is a good dude and probably didn't expect me to react like I did.  In his defense, I'm sure 99% of the people he sees don't actually do their homework, and he probably has to chastise a lot of adults who act like children about it.  He's a super nice dude though, and he does good things for my back.  On that note, I'm going to do my exercises.  That GD isn't going to know what hit him next week.  (probably all a part of his plan, right?)

So then I visited CC's class.  I don't know how to describe CC, except to tell you he's my fave.  He knows all about body stuff and movement and is good at everything involved with those.  Maybe I like him so much because that's how I hope I am about my stuff (which is not bodies and athletic stuff).  In addition to giving me more core exercises, CC poked around on my hip and back and told me my pain does not sound to him like typical disc hernation pain.  Possibly that even though the MRI shows those disc problems, the pain may still be from something else.  Which I can see because really, it feels like how SI Joint dysfunction is described.  So now I'm all confused.

There'd be days like these, my mama said...

I know I slept last night because there were some crazy dreams going on about people who I wouldn't normally have seen last night.  No, I don't have THOSE kind of dreams, at least not with anyone you want in them.  I felt like I was awake all night trying to go to sleep and hurting so bad.  Ah, well.  I'll sleep tonight.

I hurt yesterday and today more than usual.  Besides lack of sleep, I wonder if I'm becoming extra sensitive to the weather.  The fellas and I were leaving lunch, and as I sat in the back seat, pain shot through me, and I had to take a walk around the parking lot.  Of course, they are actually 12 year olds, so one of them started making fart noises at me.  Yes, these are your tax dollars at work, people.

There have been several changes to my routine, so I don't know if I should blame weather, physical therapy, or even the yoga I did Friday morning.  I do yoga for the stretching and balance stuff, not the ohm.  Before my injury, yoga kicked my butt.  Now it knocks me flat on said butt.  I was going to start with swimming yesterday, but the thought of an over-crowded pool on a Saturday (with awesome weather) made me think twice.

Kegels?!

I know what you're thinking.  Kegels? Who even does those anymore?  Well they aren't to make me a better pee-er, but apparently they do work a muscle down there that is attached to the spine.  And we are ALL ABOUT THE SPINE!  According to Good Doc, I'm to do 200 of them each day.  This doctor visit involved a lot of giggling.  I didn't know how to do kegels properly, so the man had to explain...  giggles.

In addition to kegels, I am to do 3 sets of 10 leg lifts twice per day.  Lying flat on my back, the leg lift sequence goes: fat tummy (giggles), kegel, suck in tummy, lift legs.  Cool.  Got it.

So that isn't much, but the focus is on some core muscles.  The Good Doc will add more next visit.

This visit, he ultrasounded my back and did some manual stretches.  He stretched out my hamstrings, which I've struggled to do on my own.  That felt awesome, so I said, "My husband has to do this for me at home, right?"

Good Doc:  "Absolutely! And you guys can probably barter some kind of payment!"

Me:  "Heck yeah! I gots skillz!"

Good Doc turned red... giggles!  "Well, I meant maybe you could cook him his favorite dinner!"

Me:  "Right.  Like I feel like standing in the kitchen!"  ...giggles.

The Good Doc also said that my pain is probably more from the bulginess of the disc running into the nerve, so I'm pretty much allowed to do anything that doesn't hurt.  Unfortunately, a lot of things still hurt me, like running, jumping, you know, the fun stuff.  I asked if it was cool for me to do yoga and go swimming, and he was all about that.

Sweet!  I have been doctor approved to attempt movement!  Yoga and swimming are good because I stick with things better when I have to leave the house to work out.  The same old thing day after day, week after week gets BORING!  (If you're into that, try P90X.  Blech.)  We have a really really super duper cheap membership to a local community center/gym because Hubs works for that city.  Unlike some other community centers, they don't charge extra for most classes like yoga and water bootcamp.  But really, I'm going to start slow with the swimming thing.  Well.  And yoga.  I'm not good at either.

Starting Point

From what I've gathered, here is what is going on in my back:  A couple of discs ruptured and spilled out their contents into restricted airspace.  Now my nerves back there are getting their no-fly zone butts kicked and it hurts like hell.  The spillage needs to be cleaned up ASAP by my body and this should relieve the nerve pain.  What I don't know (and will ask the Good Doc this week) is if the jelly junk keeps spilling out of these discs or is it all out or does the blowout in the disc heal up and stop more jelly junk from taking off.

In the meantime, I can't really lie about and not do stuff.  I did for a few weeks, and it absolutely killed me.  By moving around some, my body definitely gets loosened up and feels much better.

My goal in this first week has been to keep moving and stretching.  I have found that air squats and pushups do not hurt done fairly slowly and deliberately.  The crossfit-approved pushups do hurt (you know the ones where you pick your hands up off the deck at the bottom).  Walking seems to help as well.

Days 1 walked 1/2 mile
            3 rounds of 5 squats/pushups with stretching between
Days 2-3 walked 1 mile followed by squats/pushups/stretching (morning and evening)
Day 4 1 mile/squats/pushups/stretching (morning).  It was hailing in the evening.

The first few days, I was really worn out.  I don't know if it's because the exercise is really all that difficult, pain is exhausting, or because I have to work too.  My work generally involves a lot of sitting.  After about an hour, that starts to get uncomfortable, so I go for walks.

In the beginning...

From what I understand, disc injuries usually start with an event.  I started having back pain when I was 18, and the only traumatic injury I can remember having that summer was a good fall while mountain biking.  The guy ahead of me swerved to miss something, lost control and went down.  I swerved to miss him and went down.  He broke his collarbone, and I limped around for a few days with some hip pain.  I don't see why I couldn't have bulged some diskage there somehow.

Shortly thereafter, I went to Dr. Schneider because my back was hurting.  Dr. Schneider was my mom's doctor, local, and so I went.  He x-rayed my back and told me about my bonus vertebrae.  He also told me that because of it, I would always have back pain and the only thing he do was prescribe me pain meds.  Crazily enough, my mom was on every medication known to man for all her various ailments and of course, side effects of those medications.  I knew I didn't want to venture down that road.  At least I was smart about something at 18.  Want to know what Dr. Schneider is doing now?  Thirty years.

A year or so later, I decided to get a second opinion.  The back pain had come back.  It was never around for very long, a week or two at the most.  I was on my dad's insurance and went to a military doctor.  He told me that because of that bonus vert, I would always have back pain.  He then told me that as long as I was overweight, I would have more problems.  Between that and wanting to be a cop, I went off and lost 50 pounds.  Like he said, I would still have this pain that showed up for a few days at a time.  I got to the point where if it started hurting, I'd take things easy for a few days, and it would chill out.

The pain always felt like it does now, only maybe not as bad and definitely not for this long.  Is there a possibility I have had bulging discs for a while?  Who knows.  The Good Doc that I go to now didn't initially suspect a disc problem.  He thought it was SI Joint Dysfunction.  If you look at the symptoms of that, well, that's what I feel.  Pain in the lower back/right hip, worse when standing/sitting, extreme pain when sneezing or coughing.  Good Doc did some other stuff to make him think this, moving me around in different ways and whatnot.

I like the Good Doc.  He ordered x-rays of my back.  Slight Scoliosis.  He ordered MRI of my back.  Two ruptured discs.  He gave me a referral to the non-surgical Spine Doc, who I will see later.  Then I passed out in his office while I was reading the rest of MRI report.  Do you want to know that I have an unremarkable uterus?  Well, I do.

Supplements

I have picked up a lot of information about disk herniation through internet research in the last few days.  I'm trying to sort it all out in my head and figure out just what my plan is.  The non-surgical spine specialist didn't have any appointments available until the end of April, so I needed something to do for this until I can check in with him.  I'll get that figured out and posted up later.

In addition to herniated disks, my mri showed some early signs of osteoarthritis in my affected L5/L6.  (Yeah, I got a bonus vert.  I is speshul.)

Right.  In the past I've not been big on supplements and mostly because your typical daily vit makes me queasy and tired.  Take it with crackers, people want to say.  Great, that takes care of queasy.  It's the tired that sucks!

In my attempt not to become a 90 year old woman in the next year or so, I have decided to supplement.  I trekked to the drugstore and bought my pills.  I walked out of said drugstore and put off the red headbanded, striped pajama-bottomed lady asking for my change.  I realized I forgot to get a pill box and walked back in.  I again left the drugstore and farewelled the crazy lady.  When I got home, I filled up my little box.

Sidenote on the crazy chick.  So when I walked out the first time, she approached me from across the parking lot.  I instinctively snapped into my academy-approved ready stance.  (No, not so much.)  She asked if I had any change.  No, I sure don't.  Well, you have a bless-ed day.  You do the same.  On take two, she at least didn't try to approach me, but HOLLARED across the lot, "Ma'am did you find any change?"  "No, but maybe you'd like to borrow my debit card?"  "Really?"  Yeah, really.  "NO!"  Dumbass.

Back to my drugs.

So this is what I'm downing:

Vitamin D

10,000 I.U. per day for 4 weeks

Calcium Citrate

1000 mg per day

Magnesium

500 mg per day for 4 weeks

Fish Oil

14 g per day for 4 weeks

*That's a lot of Fish Oil.

Folic Acid

400 mcg per day

*not trying to have kids just yet, but they say to start this early (and just in case).  The link is to a video on a study done to test the effects of Folic Acid on female athletes.  It seems to be a generally good thing for us chicks.

Several of the above will be cut in halvsies or so after the first month.  By then, I oughtta be really good at shoving fish pills down my throat.  I'm also taking them in two doses, morning and night.  Sidenote, I completely agree that people would be better off to get their nutrition from actual food and not pills.  Usually I like to cook, but at the moment, I'm not big on standing in the kitchen or anywhere else for very long.  I'm not eating much healthy variety lately, and this is a battle I'm choosing not to pick right now.