I want to thank the many of you who kindly offered support and sympathy in response to the recent newsletter about my problem with chronic pain. My case of lumbar spinal stenosis sometimes gives me an aching back but more commonly either weakens or sends a lot of sharp pain down my right leg. This time it happens to be an especially disabling pain that just won’t go away. I am hobbling about with the aid of a cane but find it hard to get much done or focus on anything for long. Even producing a weekly newsletter has proven to be difficult, and I have to suspend its publication for another couple of weeks.
I’m waiting now to discuss the results of an MRI with a neurologist and to find out if an operation might be necessary to relieve pressure on the nerve root. I wish I could speed up their process, but medical bureaucracy takes its own sweet time. If you’re interested, here’s a background piece on lumbar stenosis.
Fortunately, I continue to be free of problems with depression. In fact, I’m excited about starting a new writing venture into fiction. This will take me away from blogging about depression for a while but only because blogging has brought me so far in healing that I want to focus on what lies ahead rather than all that I have been through in the past.
I’ll talk more about this change when I have a bit less pain to deal with and can get back to a regular writing schedule. In the meantime, here are a couple of posts by Dick Sederquist about his experience with spinal stenosis, and about the day his post-surgery pain broke, as well as an inspiring piece by Dan Lukasik about resilience. These have been helpful to read in the past week.
Thank you all for your support.
I too have spinal stenosis and have had successful neck and back surgeries. I continue to do exercises for both of them. After 29+ years of five kinds of pain, God has enabled me to accept pain, while I try to control it. Thirteen years into my pain, which showed up at the depth of my seven years of depression, I discovered that I was angry at God that he has allowed me to have pain. I poured out my anger to him focusing on him in prayer like Job and David in the Bible. I had sixty laments over two months before God gave me peace about my pain so that I accepted it as part of my life. God took my anger about it away. See my website bruceleiterthewriter.com and blog http://www.storiedmind.com/comment-subscriptions?sre=&srk=f2a4e1cb58f6da48c354f1da8a309179&srp=4710&sra=c .
Good post….Pain is an unpleasant conscious experience that emerges from the brain when the sum of all the available information suggests that you need to protect a particular part of your body. When a health illness or condition is chronic it means it is long-lasting. visit our site for good tertments for Back Pain, Diabetes, Fibromyalgia, Thyroid.
Hi, many congratulations on your blog.
Please can I suggest you try taking tylenol/paracetamol; it appears the brain centre that interprets physical pain also interprets psychological pain. I am finding this drug makes major reductions in my experienced symptoms.
Best wishes
John
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol#Psychological_effects
My wife ended up with sciatic pain. We have no idea how or why. But since I have been practicing holistic nursing in the hospital for more than a decade, we thought I should be able to find a way to end the pain.
I found it.
The nagging question that everyone asks me, how come doctors don’t know this.
The answer is that there is no money in it. When those I treat are better, they never come back. I run into them on the street and they tell me how great they feel and stories of having their lives back but they never need me again.
The first thing we did was to use the water cures protocol. http://www.watercures.org/end-back-pain-forever.html
We also tried Bowen Works. It may sound weird but I used it to end my carpel tunnel pain and once to end my knee pain. It works. It is a bit expensive though. The water cure is basically free.
Next, diet. Move your diet to 50 percent raw food or more. One of the best foods to eat is 1 raw beet a week. Mix it with a carrot raisin salad. This alone will help the pain.
If the above do not work fast enough for you, add NAC or N-Acetlycysteine. It is an over the counter form of cysteine, which helps the body make glutathione, the master antioxidant, master detoxifier and master immunity booster.
Pain comes from inflammation so eliminate the inflammation and you lessen the pain and increase healing.
This should be enough to get you started. Of those I treat, I have not found one person who I have not been able to relieve the pain or at least drastically improve their life.
Oh yea, since treating her, I decided to open my own practice. Just in the process of doing that now.
Oh, I forgot. I wish that you find the best way to manage your pain.
I was diagnosed with spinal stenosis in 2007. My pain sounds similar to yours…radiating down to my thighs, legs and toes. I pretty much have taken the strongest pain relievers, went through a series of physical therapy, got a shot of steroid on my spine, still the pain recurs. I’m not ready for surgery. I have learned to manage it well enough for me to move pretty much normally. When I stopped dwelling on my pain, it seems to have let up on me. If I’m stressed and lack sleep, it strikes. I can’t swim, I just float and kick around in the water, it works for me.
that’s exactly my symptoms
So what are you doing now, I spend my days hoping it will be better than yesterday. I take high does of narcotics, and sometimes they seem to have same effect that Tylenol would have. I Have had injections and not they are wanting to put an internal TENS Unit inside my back, have not agreed yet, as I reject things easily. I had a gastric bypass 25+ yrs ago and my immune system is wacked.
Great news that you continue to be free of depression but I do sympathies with you for the pain. I too am a sufferer of chronic pain but I my goal is everyday to be grateful for all the good things that happen to me and I try and concentrate on that when the pain gets unbearable. I try to focus on the challenge of getting better rather than worry about the pain. although I must say because of the pain somedays its difficult to remain positive its a constant challenge.
Hi John,
I can really sympathize with you. If your neurologist suggests surgery, you can be confident of good results. I had spondylolisthesis and spinal stenosis and ended up having a spinal fusion and laminectomy. The surgery went well and the PCA pump (morphine) kept me relatively pain free the day after surgery. Within a week of going home, I was walking a few miles every day (partly to keep from going stir-crazy) and was able to use just tramadol for the pain. Within three weeks I was off pain meds. I am very pleased with the outcome of the surgery and consider it well worth it. The recovery is long, since it takes about a year for the spine to fuse comepletely, and it is certainly not fun, but it’s not that bad. Personally, a major depression is much more difficult to go through.
Best of luck,
Dave
Hi, Dave –
Thanks for letting me know. I’ve heard about good results from operations like yours from others as well, and it’s so hopeful to know that things can get better. Going for long walks is my number one day dream at the moment!
My best to you —
John
So happy for you, that seems so far off and I have incredible fear about surgery!
Thinking of you, John, and sending lots of positive thoughts for healing your way….
Thanks, Janet –
All my best to you. It does help having some experience at living with a chronic condition.
John