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Blog III
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Month 8 Sunday 7th
September 2008
I am holding out my wrists. You can slap them, as
it's been so long since I did a blog entry. (What
is the sound of one wrist being slapped on the
internet....?)
The thing is that I've already rambled on about most of
the things I can think of to do with
chronic back pain. So when it's a case of simply
pootering on with small changes from week to week,
punctuated by the inevitable setbacks, there's not much
incentive to get out the old MS Front Page and
do something.
Anyway, to horse: I've gone back to the drawing board
and decided to try something completely
different - acupuncture. Ho yes indeedy!! And I know I
banged on about this before, but this is a
big improvement on past experience. It's the strangest
thing, but you end up feeling like you've
been to the osteopath afterwards, i.e. kicked by a mule,
even though all that's happened is someone
has stuck a few needles in you. Weird.
Is it working? Yes I actually bloody well think it is!
Cue choirs of angels etc... I've had several
sessions now, and each week without exception I've
managed to increase my walking. I can now proudly
announce that I can walk for a mind-blowing 12 minutes,
which may not sound like much to you, but
compared with hardly being able to get to the toilet,
feels something like achieving the 4 minute
mile (and it used to take me about that long to get to
the bog!).
...I have to confess that I wrote that just over a week
ago. Unfortunately in the last few days I seem
to have acquired a new (old) problem which I think
involves my sacroiliac joint. It's something which used
to plague me a lot, and my osteopath said it was
hyper-mobile, which means basically too much movement in
it. It's a bugger really - why can't I have the hypo
version, it would be a lot easier to loosen it up than
it is to try to stop it moving so much. Haven't had this
for over a decade, for Christ's sake! Bah.
M onth 4 Thursday 15th May 2008
Well, predictably, the sciatica did return of course.
It seems you can have either back pain OR sciatica.
Sometimes you can indeed have both, but having neither
doesn't appear to be an option so far.
Anyway, I discovered another useful approach a few
weeks ago, via an e-book called
'Rebuild your back' by Dean Moyer.
It contains the standard Mckenzie exercises, plus extra
ones under the headings of 'mobilization'
'strengthening' 'decompression' and 'stretching'. In the
end I got fed up waiting for my back to feel 'better'
before I started doing anything beyond the absolute
basics, and after a particularly awful night of back
pain decided to start trying to get some mobility back
regardless. I'm pleased to say this has largely worked,
and I think some of the extra pain had been due to
stiffness.
So, I am a little more flexible now, and am trying to
build some strength too. I can now bend forwards again
(although I'm too chicken to go below my knees as yet!)
and I've also incorporated some of the
Stuart McGill
exercises that Ramona
showed us in class before my back packed up. I'm definately getting better at the exercises, so maybe
soon I'll be able to walk properly again?
MRI scan apparently showed degeneration at several
levels, but I haven't actually seen the report yet.
Day 82 Saturday 19th
April 2008
It's a while since I've posted anything here - I
just haven't had the heart. Everything crashed again
when I tried to go to Ramona's new Healthy Backs class.
It was nothing specifically we did in class, and is
certainly no reflection at all on Ramona's teaching - in
fact the approach of the class was to build strength and
stability, which I desperately need. No, I am convinced
it was simply the time of the class, 8-9pm, and it was
just too much for my knackered back which starts going
downhill about lunchtime even on a good day.
However, a back in crisis is a back which just needs
time to recover again, even if only to one's previous
level, and a week later I felt I was well on the way to
this. Then, an unforeseen event occurred due to a flying
West Highland Terrier which crash landed on my shoulders
(thanks Toby!). I could feel my lower spine buckling at
the time, but it was several hours before the real
damage kicked in. Oh dear. The rest of the week has been
a slightly blurry codeine experience, the object being
to try and calm my back down so I can start my exercises
from scratch, yet again. It doesn't help that it's now
so upset that even reaching for a (small) packet of
stock cubes will set things off again.
To summarise, I've been pretty hacked off.
Today I've noticed something however. My back is shit
but guess what? The sciatica has almost disappeared!!
For the first time in over a year I can walk at almost a
normal speed and it hardly hurts at all!!! So excuse me
while I pop off for a quick walk before it comes back.
Unbelievable.
Day 62 Sunday 30th
March 2008
The forum is now officially live, so why not get the
coffee on and pop over for a chat. :)
Day 58
Wednesday 26th March 2008
Ho hum. The Consultant at Addenbrookes Hospital has
deemed that I don't need an MRI scan as my condition is
'likely to improve given time'. Thanks a lot chum. How
much time? Another year? 10 years? 20? Pah! Anyway, it
looks like I'll be going to Hinchingbrooke instead now
where there is less faffing.
I am starting to think that the McKenzie exercises
are not quite living up to their early promise. Yes,
things are a lot worse if I don't do them, but on the
other hand I seem to have stopped impoving any further.
Walking any distance is no easier.
One thing I've noticed is that my back seems to get
used to the exercises. Every now and then I find it
helps to perform one of the ones from the back of the
book for people whose backs are not responding.
Basically you shift your hips away from the painful side
while doing the exercises. This does actually work for a
while. The book says to go back to the straight hipped
version when pain has centralised. So I do this and then
after a few days the pain kind of slides back into my
leg again. (Not that it ever really goes away.) Leg pain
seems to be the default unfortunately.
In the unlikely event of anyone reading this, there
should be a forum going up very shortly, so I hope you
might consider posting your thoughts on anything
relating to back pain, your own experiences, or this
blog (please be kind!) or really just anything. I always
find it helpful and constructive to share ideas,
opinions, experiences etc, so maybe others would too,
and it would be great if there were a few of us to chew
the fat. :)
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