Update Part I -- Back Stuff
Sep. 10th, 2004 03:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynhefarSo Sunday night through Tuesday was hell. I got about 5 hours of sleep total from Sunday night to Tuesday morning and most of that was in 30 minute intervals.
Couldn't go to classes Tuesday because I was literally about to fall down. The doctor gave me some muscle relaxants on Tuesday morning and with their help I took a 3 hour nap before I had to go into work. But the muscle relaxants only helped some and I was up with the pain on top of feeling groggy most of Tuesday night.
Wednesday at least I had only a few hours at work so I spent most of the rest of the time in bed. By Wednesday evening the pain had pretty much subsided and I slept 13 hours -- went to bed at 8pm (which tells you exactly how tired I was) and got up at 9am.
Yesterday it was pretty much down to the normal level of everyday pain I'm used to, which, after the previous few days, felt like heaven. I saw the orthopaedic, who was at least able to reassure me that it was not a disk problem, and that despite the pain there was no damage being done to the nerve, both of which were worries of mine. After ruling those things out, the whole situation comes down to pain management.
Basically he said there's pressure on the nerve somewhere, but they won't know where unless they do an MRI, which is expensive and even if it is covered by my insurance, I would have to pay a huge deductible. The MRI would also say whether or not it's something that could be solved by surgery, but even so, there's no guarantee that the surgery will help anything.
The other option is to simply learn to live with it, which is pretty much what I've been doing and pretty much what I expected him to say. He said that physical therapy might help some, but probably not much in my case. He also gave me a prescription for Naproxen for when the flare ups get really bad.
So that's basically the state of my back right now.
Couldn't go to classes Tuesday because I was literally about to fall down. The doctor gave me some muscle relaxants on Tuesday morning and with their help I took a 3 hour nap before I had to go into work. But the muscle relaxants only helped some and I was up with the pain on top of feeling groggy most of Tuesday night.
Wednesday at least I had only a few hours at work so I spent most of the rest of the time in bed. By Wednesday evening the pain had pretty much subsided and I slept 13 hours -- went to bed at 8pm (which tells you exactly how tired I was) and got up at 9am.
Yesterday it was pretty much down to the normal level of everyday pain I'm used to, which, after the previous few days, felt like heaven. I saw the orthopaedic, who was at least able to reassure me that it was not a disk problem, and that despite the pain there was no damage being done to the nerve, both of which were worries of mine. After ruling those things out, the whole situation comes down to pain management.
Basically he said there's pressure on the nerve somewhere, but they won't know where unless they do an MRI, which is expensive and even if it is covered by my insurance, I would have to pay a huge deductible. The MRI would also say whether or not it's something that could be solved by surgery, but even so, there's no guarantee that the surgery will help anything.
The other option is to simply learn to live with it, which is pretty much what I've been doing and pretty much what I expected him to say. He said that physical therapy might help some, but probably not much in my case. He also gave me a prescription for Naproxen for when the flare ups get really bad.
So that's basically the state of my back right now.
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