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← Return to Severe lumbar nerve pain
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I'm seeing the ortho who did my cervical fusions. In a follow-up appointment, maybe a year ago, I showed them my waist which was really deformed and honestly had shocked me. One side was sunk in and the other completely straight. They did x-rays and told me I had scoliosis. I had no symptoms. I had previously been told I have severe degenerative disc disease. Any time I have imaging done for other reasons, a radiologist will point DDD out. But I can easily feel an abrupt shift of vertebrae in my lower spine. Concerned the symptoms came on so suddenly. For an all together different reason, I was given prednisone last week. That absolutely helped calmed some of this down and I'm taking that as a good sign. But I am taking your experience very seriously and if conservative measures don't work, I would like to see a physiatrist. I can also go back to my neurologist and ask if the NCT's would be beneficial. I suddenly have started having bilateral carpal tunnel pain that is waking me up. I had it so severe in my right that I had to have surgery about 20 years ago. And my neck has continued bothering me. I feel like my entire right side of my body is in pain lol. I have a bad sinus obstruction causing pain in my face on that side too
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@sb4ca I noticed your comment about carpal tunnel pain waking you up. I wanted to share my experience with thoracic outlet syndrome that very often wakes people at night because they are laying on the shoulder compressing the same nerves that affect carpal tunnel. With TOS, when you raise your arm up to or above shoulder height, it starts to compress the nerves and vessels in the shoulder (between collar bone and rib cage). If you sleep on your side, your arm may be out at shoulder height for balance. Also neck positions can being it on if the pillow height isn't keeping the neck aligned while sleeping. I would wake up at night with an arm totally numb and it could be the one on top that I was not laying on or the one I was laying on. This involves both diminished circulation and compressed nerves.
I know you're mentioning scoliosis, and if that is affecting your chest and rib cage, it may be altering the space between the rib cage and collar bone perhaps making one side a smaller space. Some people naturally have less space there, and injuries like a whiplash can cause TOS injuring the muscles where the nerves are passing through from the spine to the shoulder. Your neurologist is a good specialist to ask about TOS. I have also had carpal tunnel surgery which didn't solve everything because TOS was missed many years ago.
The good news regarding TOS, is conservative treatment with physical therapy and Myofascial Release is often better than a surgery that would just create more scar tissue and may not solve anything. This is how I got started in Myofascial Release. I was told I had a slight thoracic "functional scoliosis" that was caused by fascial tightness pulling harder on my left side. That has resolved because of MFR work with my physical therapist. I don't know if I've told you about MFR before, and I wanted to mention it.
Here is our discussion on MFR.
Myofascial Release Therapy (MFR) for treating compression and pain
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/myofascial-release-therapy-mfr-for-treating-compression-and-pain/
Jennifer