Lower Back

More people will be by as well to comment on this. I haven't had experience in the area.

But I do wish  you well and I welcome you to the Chronic Pain board. You will meet some wonderful people here and you will want to come back here to post every day!! LOL

Know that we care about you and we wish you well!!

Come back soon ok.

   Hello AF!

    Welcome to the CP forum!

   Yes!...there are quite a few of us with lumbar back problems. I had a double Lumbar Fusion back in March of this year, and am still in the recovery process.

   A couple of questions! Are you still in the Military?.....and if it dosen't bother you, what type of med, and dosage are you on at this time.

    There are several meds that may give you some relief. At the moment I'm taking 7.5 Ocycodone (Percocet) X4 a day. It helps to take the edge off, but I still suffer some pain.

    One thing I might suggest, is to keep your back muscles stretched, by doing some sort of PT. Of course, this should be suggested under a Dr's care, since we are not Dr's here.

      It has been my experience, that one of the worst things I could do is just lay around all day long, and let my muscles go to mush.

      I have to agree, with others here, that you may indeed, have to see another Dr, for a second opinion. Yes you are young, but, if there are no other options.....and I mean NO Other Options!.....then surgery may be in your near future.

      Also, have you tried Epidural's? Were you medically discharged from the Military? Sorry for all the questions, but the more we know about you, then maybe one of our members will be able to suggest a better direction for you.

         Take care, and we look forward to hearing more from you.

    One more thing! If you worked with the B-52.....I built many of the Rotary Launchers for the Cruise Missiles. It was quite the project to say the least. That was back in the late 80's if I remember right. Not sure though, as it has been so long ago, and I live in the pain med fog these days.     

      SE

Post Edited (Screaming Eagle) : 9/23/2010 11:12:57 AM (GMT-6)

Do I understand correctly that you are still on active duty? If you are then that really limits you allot. If you are still active duty then you need to  have the AF send you to a good military medical center that does back and spinal surgeries and have them take a  good look at you!

I was stationed at Eielson AFB (four year tour) I spent close to three months at Eielson  getting the run around by Air Force and Army doctors. And they darn near killed me, or at the minimum close to paralyzing me! I finally got them to send me down to Anchorage to Elemendorf AFB and even then I had to pound my fist on a majors (neurologist) desk  down there, to get him to do the proper test on me. Well he  finally agreed and sent me back to Eielson and had me come back in 7 days, for a myelogram, in the middle of the myelogram the radiologist was freaking out, and they rushed me by ambulance to Humana Hospital in Anchorage or an MRI and to see a Neurosurgeon, they thought I had a massive tumor that was displacing my cervical spine, but in reality it was a massive herniated disk at C-6/7 with free floating fragment in my spinal canal. The neurosurgeon could not  understand why I wasn't a quadriplegic, and why I could even move my arms and walk and talk. They  ended up doing  emergency surgery there at Humana, I spent eight days in that hospital,  They ended up doing and ACDF on me, they took  out the disk and  all the fragments and then took the bone from my hip as a graft and put it where the disk was and fused it, after I came out of surgery I could not talk!  I  lost my voice from the surgery and I was that way for  over four months! It finally did come back but it was not the same. But you know before they finally found out what was wrong  with me and fixed it,  I had been seen by an Army orthopedic surgeon at Ft. Wainwright in Fairbanks he told me I was just malingering and he sent me to a shrink, but they said it was not in my head and they thought I had a major medical problem! For three months I had went to every kind of doctor imaginable, and  I had been told everything from that, I had cancer, to being crazy, to trying to get out of work, all kinds of things! Heck at that time I was a TSgt and the branch chief of the A-10 flight simulator shop if I didn't want to work I could get one of my troups to do it!   Anyway during all that time, I went through living H***  One AF doctor even manipulated me like a chiropractor , he had me lay on my back on the table and then he took my head in his hands and quickly jerked my head side ways, and when he did, it felt like bolt of lighting had struck me and my whole body lifted up off the table.  He jumped back and then he said he would never touch me again, This AF Doctor was an Osteopath. but in the end he was the only one who stuck by me and finally got me to Elemendorf Hospital. You see the only symptoms I had was my arms and hands hurt reallyreally really  bad,!!!, Just like when you hit your crazy bone really really hard, but it was like that all the time in both arms, and my hands burned so so bad,  and every time I sneezed or coughed, I thought I was going to die from the pain. It was so bad that my commander finally said that I could not  work, untill they found out what was wrong with me. He actually talked to the chaplain as I was really getting pale and they thought I was dieing,  I was at home more than a month!  I am telling you this because, I do not want to see you get messed over by some incompetent  military doctors. Keep pressing them don't let them make you work and cause you permanent damage that you will have to live with the rest of your life. I had my surgery in March of 1985  I retired with over 22years in, in Sept 1991, last September I had to have another disk fusion at C-5/6 my surgeon said I was lucky because usually when you have a disk fusion, the disk above or below the fusion goes bad and need to be fused, and usually it is within ten years of the first fusion. I got 25 out of mine!  I also found out last year that my vocal cords on my right side are paralyzed and they have been since my fusion in 85!

AF chica I also suggest that you get copies of all your military medical records,  when I retired the AF would not give me any disability, I immediately went to the VA I initially got 20 %  but it was increased to the current 60% disability . Anyway if you have any questions , or if I can be of any help to you, you can always contact me through the  E-mail,  I wish you all the best!

Good Luck to you AF chica ( Make them fix you! Please!)

White Beard

I would strongly incourage you to try getting the injections, and there is two very good reasons to consider it, first off is the pain relief, and second is the diagnostic factor. By getting the epidural spinal injection, if it does give you adequate pain relief, even if it is not long lasting, it proves that the disk area is bad and is what is causing your pain. Allot of surgeon use this as validation that surgery is needed.  I know that when I had my last disk fusion last year, my surgeon told me that the clincher for him was the fact that the epidurals given me at C-5/6 relieved my pain, and that along with the MRI  justified the need for the surgery.  Even right now there was a question about whether the pain in the back of my head and upper neck was caused by the bad disk at C-3, the one surgeon I had seen refused to do the surgery because he thought the pain was caused from the C-1 or C-2 area, so he wanted me to have PT. Well my  pain doctor at the spine pain clinic disagrees, but sent me to PT anyway just to satisfy that surgeons request,  Physical therapy really messed me up and  has just made things worse!!!,  I literally begged my pain Doc to give me another epidural just to settle things down and give me some relief. He agreed and  I have now  had a total of three epidural injections at C-3 and they have all given me  good relief of the pain, but like the ones I had at C-5 the relief is short lived and  only last 3 or 4 weeks.  Anyway my pain doctor says since the injections do give me good pain relief that is validation enough to indicate that the problem is at C-3 and surgery is definitely  needed.  So I see another neurosurgeon the first of October!!!  I will tell you that the epidurals can be painful but I have had many in my neck and I have done fine getting them, I do not take extra pain meds nor do I take the xanax prior to the injections.  I really do not think they are that bad. But with that said I think the worse injection that I have ever had was the epidural they gave me at T-12 that was unbelieveably painful!  But everyone is different!  Personally I do think you should at least  think about reconsidering having  that epidural injection. ,  

AF chica there is one thing you said, that I will admit gave me pause,  when you mentioned Lackland of course the big AF hospital there is Wilford Hall, I have been there numerous times, all I will say is, please be careful if you go there, it  can be a very good hospital and they do have some very very fine doctors there. Or at least they use to!  But they also had a reputation,I do not know if they still have that or not, but all I will say is, do not get the Doctors mad or upset with you!  It is to bad you don't have a naval facility near you, they always had the reputation of having better medical care.  I know they did right by me, the Navy fixed my knee, that the Army and AF doctors screwed up and  miss diagnosed! They actually saved my career in the AF.

I wish you well AF chica, and I do hope you can get some relief soon!

White Beard