I have been diagnosive polyneuraphy and severe DDD. I cannot lay down because pain worsens. I am scheduled for EMG and NCV. I am taking Lyrica to help with muscle spasms and nerve pain. When I am in pain I am unable to move or walk due to severe pain. I use a walker so I don't fall. Once I am up I can walk after about an hour with pain but not as severe as when I lay flat. I cannot do everyday simple chores. My muscles are weak and stretch without my help which also will cause pain to increases. The pain seems to be sore, tender and raw on the lower left side of my spine and radiates to both buttocks and legs with numbness and tingling minimal. I have been sleeping in a recliner for 3 months because I cannot lay flat. The muscle weakness seems worse in my hands and left leg and I cannot support my lower body due to the pain which has caused me to fall several time. What can be done? I need help and I am very depressed due to the pain. I will not see dr for results for 2 more months. You absolutely should not have to wait 2 months to see a doctor for this!! I also have DDD & arthritis in my spine. As a result, I have had 5 lumbar fusions including the most recent at level L5-S1. While it did not eliminate all of the pain, it did enough that the pain meds that I am taking make life bearable. You need to see a different doctor. I would suggest an orthopaedic surgeon. Don't let anybody tell you that you have to live with it. That's a rash of crap. Good luck. If your discs are that degenerated and you have multiple nerve compression, I would like to know why you haven't seen a surgeon yet? You need surgery, nothing else will help. Ask for morphine and valium. Lyrica sucks. Good luck. By the way. That 2 month waiting period is a crock. You need to get more aggressive with your doctors. You need help. Waiting for test results that long isn't acceptable. Okay, I've been on Pain meds for DDD, for almost 10 years now, because there's not a whole lot they can do about it..... I have it in my 3,4 & 5 lumbar. and in another area of my upper spine..... Its very painful, and the reason I'm on pain meds for it, plus I have Rhematoid Arthritis and arthritis in my spine, so bad, that when I went to a Neurosurgeon, for a lump on my lumbar, to be checked, only to find out the Neurosurgeon wouldn't dare touch my spine, to remove it, because he showed me how bad my spine was with Arthritis, and explained to me, that it was like a "Fragile Piece of Glass" that the surgery could very well be a Disasterous one, leaving me paralyzed, or worse, for me not to go getting a second opinion...... Or allow anyone else to try to remove it, that sometimes the lumps are nothing to worry about, and go away.... That even a biopsy could make things really "Ugly" for me....... So just go and see your doctor's and go from there...... I have never heard of a cure, or a surgery done for what we have with the DDD....... But, Good-Luck, to you anyway!! Who knows maybe they have some sort of modern remedy for it, by now...... You Have A Happy New Year, for me!!! Smile!!! Why can't you get results for 2 months? That is ridiculous!
What type of doctor are you seeing, an orthopedist or a neurosurgeon?
Have you tried other medications other than the Lyrica? (neurontin for example?)
Unfortunately, nobody can diagnose you over the net, but this does not sound good, and you are probably a candidate for some type of surgery.
If you don't like the doctor you see or are not satisfied with the answers you get, go to another specialist.
good luck. i have ampathy for you and disiese, because i also suffer from advanced degenerative disk disease. i am 43 years old with a body that is always in some kind of pain, and is physically showing . i am young at heart and have always been active. but now i feel emotional and mental anguish.i t effects my everyday routine, at times i feel less of a person because i am having troubles with the simple things. i also have fibermalgia and suffer from cronic fatigue syndrome.and yes the muscles and nerves are becoming weakened . i guess you could say i at times feel clumsy and if you will excuse for saying; retarded. i am apositive person but with this disease that we share i do understand how and why you are feeling depressed. i found that one thing that brought more pain is stress and being upset. breathing technches are also helpful, take long nice breathes, try thiese mininul but helpful tips.my thoughts and prayers are with you. Dear triplet,
I've been looking at your question, and at the answers, for a couple of days. I'm very touched by your plight as it's happened to me, too. I remember how terrible it was, not only to experience the pain, but to be unable to do ordinary housework or even to reach the floor. One cannot believe how much of one's life is ON the floor! It was frightening.
My family doctor gave me morphine, which, comically enough, had no effect at all. No side effects, no help with the pain. She did order an MRI and when the result came back she was as surprised as I was shocked, things were so bad. There were 5 herniated discs, including 2 described as "extremely large and severe, causing severe spinal stenosis." It was the kind of story that puts patients into wheelchairs, heads them to multiple surgeries and often a lifetime of pain and heavy-duty painkillers.
None of that happened to me, and this is where I hesitate to write to you. It's true that, 16 months later, I get along miraculously well without any surgery ever and with no painkillers whatsoever, not even aspirin. I can do all ordinary housework and gardening. My back doesn't bother me at all, although sometimes I'm aware it's not quite "normal" - whatever "normal" is for a 67-year-old who's recovered from 5 herniated discs.
I hesitate to write this, as it is not comforting for you to hear something like "lah-di-dah, you should get a miracle cure." Because of the severe pain you're in, I'd so much like to comfort you. The only comforting thing I can think of to say is that I'm sure you will get better. If you look in the internet through google - herniated discs, for example, and it does sound like you've got at least a disc bulging onto a nerve - you'll see that the majority of patients can and do recover without surgery. On the other hand, a significant number of post-surgical patients develop complications, relapse entirely or develop worse problems at other levels of the spine.
What I don't yet see in your question is something that I had myself. I always, always had a powerful knowledge that I would find answers and that I would not have surgery. And this turned out to be true.
What are the answers I found? Basically, a temporary special diet to lower inflammation that was much more helpful than morphine. I began to be able to walk again within 2 weeks.
I also found a number of supplements that help to lower inflammation or repair collagen, the principal component of spinal discs. Because I've studied nutrition and complementary medicine to a fairly advanced level, I was able to set up these treatment modalities quickly.
The 3rd treatment modality was the permanent one. A physiotherapeutic approach practised in my country that's said to be new, not yet taught in the USA. Unlike older approaches, this seeks to identify and strengthen the transverse abdominus, a giant muscle that wraps from the front to the back of our lower abdomen, attaches to the lower spine, supports the bottom region of the abdomen rather like a basket of muscle.
I don't know if you have any interest in trying these approaches to help yourself. I've written extensively about aspects of the diet, the supplements and the physiotherapy in two other answers to severe back pain questions. Rather than bore you with tons of extra paragraphs, may I mention that if you'd be interested you could find these details by searching back through my previous questions.
The physiotherapy approach is especially interesting to me. One of my best friends, by amazing coincidence, turned out to know a great deal about it. Thirty years ago, in studying yoga at college in New England, she had been introduced to an exotic and little-known yoga practise known as the Moola Banda. It's 5,000 years old, hardly known today even in India. She's been practising it ever since. She gave me a book about it and yes, it's the same muscle - the transverse abdominus - that my wonderful physiotherapist taught me about.
The diet: it means non-inflammatory foods for a brief period of time. And this means mostly vegetables and fruits. It's not a balanced diet, but it certainly won't hurt for two or three weeks. You'd be trying to 1) eliminate all animal-based protein molecules that are more likely to cause inflammation 2) eliminate grain-based, especially wheat, proteins for same reason and 3) slightly push up the pH blood balance from its ordinary too-acid level to a level that's a bit more alkaline.
The supplements: my nutrition prof suggested to me an American anti-inflammatory product called Zyflamend. I bought it, not totally sure it helped. (I had such a pain emergency that I tried every helpful product and modality at the same time, thus it's impossible to sort out which, exactly, were the most helpful.) In addition to Zyflamend, which is a herbal mixture that I do understand from my own studies, my prof liked aloe gel, so I got this as well.
I swallowed quantities of omega-3 essential fatty acids and believe these are essential in controlling inflammation and therefore pain.
There are 2 omega-3s, eicosapentanoic acid known as EPA, and docosahexanoic acid known as DHA. Of these two, it's the EPA you need to combat inflammation. It helps the body produce more of the anti-inflammatory prostaglandin and suppress the two pro-inflammatory prostaglandins. (If this sounds complicated, it is) With respect to EPA, during the period of acute pain, you need to aim for 1 gram per day. There are very few products that contain so much EPA, I only found two. Whatever you buy should be manufactured from molecularly-distilled fish oils (to get rid of the heavy metals) and you have to read the labels carefully to determine the EPA proportion, because most of these products contain too much DHA.
You can have some flax oil (don't heat it) with your special temporary diet, and you can cook with olive oil. These will not disturb the high EPA balance of the omega 3s that you're trying to maintain for a period of time.
On my own, I dug up a fairly new product known as hydrolysed collagen. Remember, your spinal discs are made almost entirely of collagen. You can find information in the internet. Hydrolysed collagen has gone through a process that renders the large molecules small enough for human assimilation by oral ingestion. It's sold in pill and liquid form, in Canada and in the United Kingdom, I don't know about the US. I bought the liquid form, and because of the extraordinary, almost miraculous "cure" that I enjoyed, tend to believe the collagen was helpful although I only took about 1/3 the dose recommended on the bottle label.
A related supplement is called hyaluronic acid. This is a component of collagen. Hyaluronic acid is quite popularly sold in health food stores through the USA where people buy it to rejuvenate their skin. I bought it, still have some in my cupboard, think it's a good idea.
Another anti-inflammatory approach is big on enzymes. These are widely sold in health food stores. You want to make sure that large undigested molecules in food are helped to break down before they can trigger inflammation.
In closing, one tiny note: Lyrica is Neurontin, both are trademark forms of the underlying generic drug gabapentin. Every patient has a unique pain footprint and working out the pain-killing drugs that can help is a delicate procedure. Surely your doctor will help you? I found Celebrex to be helpful, and swallowed this during the acute pain phase, but I haven't taken it in months and would never take it permanently as I believe it may be dangerous for the heart on a chronic basis.
I will think of you. Come back soon and let us know how you are doing. |
