2011, So Far...

...has been rough, and my back pain hasn't been the worst of it.

9/11:  This year was hard.  With the 10 year anniversary, it was everywhere.  The images, the news coverage, the heartache.  Everyone remembers where they were.  I had taken a day off from work and college to visit my parents and trade cars with them.  My dad came home from work shortly after the second plane hit.  He stood in the foyer in his BDU's hugging my mom and me, while tears rolled down his cheeks.  I think he knew we (the country and my most immediate loved ones) were in for a lot of suffering.  I remember in 2003 when my dad and my brother were both in Afghanistan.  While it was hard for us at home, it was good for my brother because I think he desperately needed something of a morale boost in the form of visit from his ol' dad.  When my bro came home, he was diagnosed with PTSD.  He has attempted suicide twice, the most recent being this past Memorial Day.  We hope and pray he will stick with treatment.  My brother's crisis has been the roughest part of the year.  On 9/11, I couldn't help but think about how significantly the attacks that day continue to affect my family and so many of our friends.

This is not a sad post though.  I'm filling you in on where we've been this year and how we've gotten to where we are.  Between hospital visits and backpain, Hubs and I haven't been doing much, and we're sick and tired of being lazy mopes who sit around the house during the remaining time on our days off, playing video games.  Well, he does that.  I sit around against a hot pad and roll on my foam and tennis balls.  This has become the habit, and this girl is ready for a change.  I really just have to get back outside and live a little.

We're going on a little adventure...

A New Diagnosis

All right, where was I.  I had an epidural at my blown out L4-L5 disc on 09/01/11.  I had weird numb and tingling feelings on the outside of my leg.  My pain was numb for about 4 hours before conveniently returning.  The doc said it might get worse before it got better.  I was in a good amount of pain for about a week straight.

A week later (09/08/11, if you're keeping track), I went to see Good Doc.  He has hired a D.O. to work in his office, and invited her in to check me out.  I explained what all had happened over the past 7 months, and she said, "Well, perhaps it's Maigne's Syndrome."  I hadn't heard of that before.  Neither had GD.  It's amazingly simple really.  The muscles around the spine where the thoracic vertebra and lumbar vertebra meet (thoracolumbar (TL) junction) get super tight and pull on the crest of the pelvis where all these nerves are.  The ones that feel like SI Joint pain and herniated disc pain.  The treatment is manual therapy and adjustment of the TL junction, which GD did.  When I jumped up, I felt amazazing!  I had gone into the office at a pain level of about 4.  I left with it at about a 1.

The following day, I had a followup for my epidural with Dr. Sean's PA.  I told her what had happened the day before (I still felt pretty good).  She had never heard of this Maigne's Syndrome either, but tried to look it up on some medical diagnosis website.  It wasn't there, so she googled it.  After reading for a moment, she mentioned that it was more of a chiropractic diagnosis.  Um, okay, but that really doesn't matter to me.  Then she did an exam of me and asked where my pain was.  I pointed to a spot on my back/upper butt.  She said, "Oh, that's an inflamed gluteus medius muscle.  It's common after injections."  Derp.  That's what she said before.

I got back to the chiro on Wednesday.  Until them I am rolling on my foam roller and tennis ball and having very little pain.  It's crazy that I've been so tortured for so many months by something that is actually relatively simple to remedy!  I'm glad the new D.O. knows her stuff, or I would still be running in circles!