Yes, this is another post about the progression of my health.
As I lowered the dose of prednisone last week the pain intensified, and if having constant pain wasn’t enough I also started to suffer insomnia. For some reason the pain is worse when lying or sitting, which means that I cannot get any rest. During the night the pain builds up until it’s so strong that it wakes me up. Initially I started waking up 4 to 6 hours after falling asleep, but it got worse during the week and at some point I couldn’t sleep more than 2 hours straight.
I started going to this chiropractor and I think she is pretty good. I haven’t been to a chiropractor before, so I don’t have any previous experience to compare her with, but she does massages in addition to spinal manipulation, and her massages are the bests I have ever received. She also had a great suggestion for my sleep problems: to sleep facing down with a rolled towel or thick pillow under the left side of my pelvis. That worked pretty well allowed me to sleep about 6 hours again.
The pain and the sleep deprivation is starting to take a toll on me. I’ve given up on trying to work. I’m unable to focus and was doing a crappy job anyway; the only thing that I was achieving was to hurt myself. My doctor is starting to think I may need surgery. He wants me to get back on prednisone and to start taking stronger opioids. I really don’t want to repeat the same cycle of euphoria and depression. These drugs mess my head too much and I’m already prone to psychotic breaks. I’m finally going to do an MRI on Wednesday in order to decide what to do next.
My mother thinks I should go back to Spain. The only thing that really keeps me here are Mariana’s studies.
6 Comments
Hang in there man, I hope it’ll get better!
Man, I’m sorry to hear that. Be it surgery or a chiropractor (though I’d personally choose a proper physiotherapist), I hope you find the way to bring yourself back to a healthy condition, or at least a tolerable condition which lets you get along.
Phsyotherapy in the US sucks badly, it has nothing to do with the way it is in Spain, in fact, I’m discontinuing it now; I’ll just continue doing the exercises on my own. I was a bit skeptical about the chiropractor at first, but she just does awesome massages. The effect on the pain is very immediate, even though in my case, the pain level goes back to normal after a day or so.
Hi,
I’m guy with a bad back who happens to be on good terms with some physios. I’m not a medical person but my wife is a physiotherapist and I just spent two years sharing a house with a Spanish physiotherapist who was over here in the UK to study. Although people all over the world use the name Physiotherapist, in fact that term covers wildly differing professions. From my physio contacts I know that the centres of physiotherapy training as a scientifically-based evidence-led discipline are Australia/New Zealand and to a lesser extent the UK.
If you could find an Australasian or UK trained physio with good qualifications out there, they might be able to help you. A chiropractor will crack your joints and do things that make you feel good and want to come back but not necessarily act in the best long term interest of your health. They certainly wont be able to explain their clinical reasoning in terms that relate their actions to the best evidence from relevant valid studies in the literature, which a good senior physio should be able to do.
I know it is utterly pointless for me as a non-medic to give this advice, but I’ve read a few of these posts now and I wanted to say something.
I hope you do find some help for your problem, whatever that help turns out to be.
Best,
Andrew
Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I don’t get to chose my physiotherapist under my medical plan, but from what I’ve heard it’s pretty hard to find a good one anyway. What’s turning out most effective is to swim daily. I joined a masters team and I’ve been exercising pretty hard. I also got a steroid epidural injection which is greatly relieving the pain. I still have some sleep troubles, and I’m still on Ibuprofen during the night, but nothing compared to the state I was a few weeks ago. I’m confident that if I continue this exercise program I’ll be back to normal in a few more months.
Glad to hear about that progress. Exercise is definitely a good thing in my case. Hope it continues to help for you.
Good luck.