severe back pain

LegacyUser

i have it for a long time. Taking solpadol, but not much good. xray normal.so bad i cannot sleep. awake since 6am today and tired

tbh

mate, I feel for you, honestly I do, but we have to be very very careful about these type of threads. If anyone has any experience with long-term pain management, post here, but any posts that hint of medical advice will be deleted.

LegacyUser

tbh wrote: »

mate, I feel for you, honestly I do, but we have to be very very careful about these type of threads. If anyone has any experience with long-term pain management, post here, but any posts that hint of medical advice will be deleted.

okthanks. I am not seeking medical advice, more wondering if others have had this to the extent they canot sleep and if it stops them working.i am not working now but am seeking work and wondering how i wil do it as i miss a couple hours sleep every night and am sat at pc with a hot water bottle at my back. same if i watch a dvd

colrow

Unregistered wrote: »

i have it for a long time. Taking solpadol, but not much good. xray normal.so bad i cannot sleep. awake since 6am today and tired

I would go to a doctor straight away, a close friend ignored his back and self trated it, and by the time he eventually called the doc, it was too late, it could be a symptom of something else, so get it checked out properly

LegacyUser

colrow wrote: »

I would go to a doctor straight away, a close friend ignored his back and self trated it, and by the time he eventually called the doc, it was too late, it could be a symptom of something else, so get it checked out properly

OP here yes have been to doc he says there is nothing else. I could get stronger pain killers but then cold not handle side effects

LegacyUser

OP here

I had neuromuscular therapy. Going again next week . Said he will cure in 4 sessions but very sore after it. Anyone had this?

nerdysal

I had constant back pain for a year and it was unbearable. I went to a physiotherapist and within a few days my pains were gone, all through a few simple exercises!

squeky

hello,
I suffer from chronic pain due to a car accident 4 years ago, it is unbearable at times and i have had all scans, injections, nerve blocks, pills everything and as a last resort i have a spinal cord stimulator implant which i find very good.."it dosent get rid of your pain totally 100% but it really does help you cope.. im in the middle of a pain mamagement programme now in st. vincents hospital in dublin and in that course you speak to pain specialist doctors, phychology"Cognitve behavioural therapy approach", physio, excerises, Relaxation classes and occupational therapy..

chronic pain is becoming to be known as a disease in its own right and alot people think by looking at you that you are grand!!, but you all know the truth yourselves, i would advise anybody to try attend any type of pain management course as in that setting you are in a group of up to 10 people of all ages and all different pains and you get one to one attention and you can ask lots of questions and you are not at all classed as a fake!!

you also have a family day where all the team of specialists chat to yor family or friends and explain to them all about your pain..

if anyone wants to know anymore them just ask me

Jurisprudence

This is not medical advice but merely a technical observation for the OP and others to consider. If the only test which has been conducted in order to discern the origination of back/spinal pain was a standard non-contrast x-ray of the area where the pain is felt and nothing more has been investigated such a study could be considered incomplete. Tests such as CT scans and particularly MRI's are used on this area of the body for very good reasons. Standard x-rays are incapable of observing with sufficient precision many causes of back pain including those which would prove fatal if left alone without treatment. Furthermore the spine is a focal point for referred pain from other organs (but not the only one) and should not automatically be considered the point of origination of a patients discomfort.

If your doctor (assuming GP) disagrees with his ask him to consult any medical journal not published by a lunatic, contact the Irish Cancer Society or tell him to learn to use Google. Alternatively he/she should go back to med school. Back pain can be a very serious warning sign as pointed out by another poster. It should be dealt with seriously and expediently. This cannot be done by standard x-ray alone, it is a technical impossibility, not a medical opinion.

Technical part over.....Personal part begins...

From personal experience and information given to me by unnamed licensed medical practitioners in this country some doctors do not like investigating back pain. It can have too many causes, takes too much time and may require several tests, referrals and visits. It therefore can be a resource hog before diagnosis. Hospitals do not like this as the HSE overlords frown on using what they consider too much money on a single patient (they do calculate this BTW, it is not conjecture). In other words for them the diagnosis is not an easy one so they don't want to know, but you should. It might not be an easy kill for them in terms of diagnosis but it could kill you.

Many GP's treat back pain in the same manner as they treat patients presenting with disorders of the GI tract. They label their condition as IBS without correct identification or investigation and give you a prescription for pills (IBS, like back pain should always be an exclusionary diagnosis). IMHO any doctor who does this should be considered negligent.

This is coming from someone still awake from extreme back pain at 6am awaiting MRI results after 11 months waiting to get a scan on the public system, 5 in terrible pain with symptoms closely correlated to those of cancer. Could be a bad back, could be lymphoma or metastatic cancer. They kept saying it was IBS until I started collapsing and multiple lumps started forming and even then one GP tried to get me to agree to the IBS diagnosis and admit it was all in my head. Just so she could avoid paperwork and referrals. You never know until its dealt with throughly.

This is not medical advice merely personal bad experience with a similar issue on the Irish healthcare system.

kipple

Here is another view on scans and back pain from the NY Times, which is a really good read for anybody with chronic pain.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/health/09scan.html?_r=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

From personal experience and information given to me by unnamed licensed medical practitioners in this country some doctors do not like investigating back pain. It can have too many causes, takes too much time and may require several tests, referrals and visits.

What you say is true. Here is a quote from Serge Gracovetsky a spinal researcher "...low back pain is a difficult condition to diagnose ..... In my opinion fees for medical procedures concerning low back pain should be considerably increased so that the doctor can spend the necessary preoperative and postoperative diagnoses using appropriate tools, while maintaining the same level of income."

Here is the link and the quote is on the last paragraph.
http://www.somatics.de/Gracovetsky/Interview.pdf

T.

LegacyUser

Jurisprudence wrote: »

If your doctor (assuming GP) disagrees with his ask him to consult any medical journal not published by a lunatic, contact the Irish Cancer Society or tell him to learn to use Google. Alternatively he/she should go back to med school. Back pain can be a very serious warning sign as pointed out by another poster. It should be dealt with seriously and expediently. This cannot be done by standard x-ray alone, it is a technical impossibility, not a medical opinion.

OP here. My doctor said one would have other symptoms with cancer. i am doing really good with neuromuscular therapy, practically off painkillers after 4 session about 3 more he says. i know i wrote 4 would do it but it is a hard to tell. I hope it lasts. This is not medical advice but here is a link to nmt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromuscular_therapy

I am not mentioning the therapist name as do not want to be seen to advertise and also be aware that sessions are painful to me and i am sore afterwards. Don't know if that happens with everyone.

he showed me simple stretching exercises which usually, not always, take away any pain i get now.The only thing is i hope it lasts as i said when i stop going

This is not med advice

cazmcco

Hey OP!

My mam has had severe back pain for just over 22 years now. Back in the early days she went to every doctor and quack around the place to see if she could find out what had caused it (although she had a pretty good idea herself) let alone a cure for it. No one helped her and she never got any relief from them.

This was untill she went to a chiropractor, who referred her to another one, the original one wouldn't treat her due to other medical conditions that she had. Any ways this man finally gave her relief. She will always have to go back to him because her condition, which originally started as an injury, was to old to cure. Sometimes she can get 6 months or more out of a treatment, other times she will have to go back once or twice a month to him. The important thing is that she gets relief.

On a personal note, i also have the same condition as her, although no where near as severe. It gets uncomfortable at night and when im sitting for a long time, inparticular in college in cheap chairs. When i go to him i get almost immediate relief.

I know that chiropractors are not a very popular profession, but i would highly recommend them, in particular the one that we go to.

The only thing is that id advise you to keep going and to give them a chance. They are not always able to get you sorted in one or two visits. One of the biggest advantages I find is that (our one at least) doesn't let mam take any medication, with the exception of panadol. This is because when your dosed up on meds (like strong pain killers and anti-inflammatory in particular) they cant see how bad the problem is, if that makes sence? The way your standing, how bad the pain is, exactly what spot its in etc etc. I also know of someone that went and although it was in their back that they felt the pain, it was their ankle that was injured, so its not always very straight forward.

Please don't take anything that I said as medical advice, its only what iv witnessed through personal experience.

PM me if you want any of the details of the chiropractor that we go to.

Jurisprudence

Unregistered wrote: »

OP here. My doctor said one would have other symptoms with cancer.


I'm afraid from personal experience thats really an opinion which varies wildly. To give an example I was told by two different A+E doctors in Beaumont hospital two totally different stories in 3 days. One said patients with cancer wouldn't have a clue they have have it, the other said I would know about it without question. After being told repeatedly over the last 6 months it was in my head by multiple GP's I now have an urgent MRI (private cash payment, not public) tomorrow morning to determine if I have pancreatic cancer after further later symtoms beyond back pain have come into play, with the clear death sentence that that entails.

If your GP is correct in his assessment early stage cancer diagnosis would be much easier. It is not as people do not push the issue and accept what the GP states without proper diagnostics. The idea that all cancer patients have a full set of pre-defined symptoms is simply a lie. Often a person may have none or just one that may appear innocuous and people let slide, until they are sliding into a grave when it becomes too late to defend against it.

What absolutely sickens me to my core on the Irish public health system is the use of the phrase that a doctor has used their 'professional opinion' as a way to evade liability for a failure to deal with their patients upto a diagnostic level which would be considered adequate in other European countries. I have been told today by my GP that after he had told me it was all in my head for months he is now scared that quote 'I'm the one' that he messed up on and 'will come back to bite him in the ass'. If I'm dying after their medical failures there will be a battle ahead of a different kind, the one with cancer already having a predetermined outcome.

Professional opinions are not those given by someone by virtue of having letters before or after their name (I have those myself but do not hold myself out in scenarios where I have no experience or have no direct contact). A professional opinion is one given by a person who has held themselves out as being qualified to give a professional opinion in that field, has been certified as such by a recognised body and most importantly issues that opinion after having giving rational and thoughtful consideration to all the circumstances presented, available or reasonablly deducable to them for each individual situation at a medical level only without consideration of the financial costs (i.e. a patient should be told of potential treatments even if they cannot afford them rather than fobbing them off and telling them it can't happen).

Its that last part that so often does not happen in Ireland and is IMHO one of the greatest reasons for the high fatality rate for cancers in this country.

3 GP's, 5 A+E doctors, 2 consultants and several ancillary hospital staff members repeatedily ignored my back pain for the last 6 months. Tomorrow I may find out it was fatal.

This is not medical advice, just really bad experiences being told it was all in my head until it may be too late. Life is precious, according to our Constitution the most precious right of all. Just not to some medical professionals in this country or the HSE. As a general statement protect yourselves and your health and demand further examination at aall times, the HSE won't. Your just not cost effective to them.