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Spinal Fusion of L1-L4: Managing pain, what works for you?
Spine Health | Last Active: Apr 6, 2016 | Replies (23)Comment receiving replies
Hello, I had very similar surgery 5 years ago due to a work injury. NO MORE TWISTING MOVEMENTS/EXERCISES. Please stop this. With the type surgery we have had that is the absolute WORST thing you can do. You HAVE to be your own advocate for back pain care. Look for and find a GOOD pain specalist, one who will listen to your concerns and does more than just prescribe pain pills. Also, clean up your diet and focus on foods that fight inflammation. Physical therapy will help as well. Most type of water exercises will help with stress relief and keeping you joints moving. Check out the web site, loosethe backpain.com and see which of the strategies work for you. I have found more help from this web site that I stumbled onto quite by accident. Also, what medications are you taking? I take Neurotin, Celebrex, Cymbalta, all for nerve inflammation Nycunta for pain. Subcribe to several feeds/blogs on chronic pain: WebMD, The Mayo Clinic; Neurology Now, a free bi-monthly publication for patients and their care givers. Any time I am in a doctors office I peruse the publications in the waiting room to see what might be relevant to me. If you want to contact me directly by private message. Good luck in your journey to better quality life. Also, NEVER lift anything much over 10 pounds
Replies to "Hello, I had very similar surgery 5 years ago due to a work injury. NO MORE..."
Colleen, thanks for the information on not sharing my email pubically. I<br />
hope the lady who posted this can find a few strategies that will help her.<br />
There wasn't a lot of ways to manage back problems when I had my back surgery. Plus I had a really bad case of scoliosis. The top was a 66 degree and the bottom 63 degree. I was told it was moving a degree a year and it would crush my lungs and heart if I didn't do the surgery. Is there any options for a problem like that?<br />
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Here is the link to sign-up for Mayo Clinic's Pain Management Adviser e-newsletter that @riverqueen1305 mentions https://newslettersignup.mayoclinic.com/?fn=211 for anyone interested. It's free.
Hello, <br />
Thank you for your advice. I tend to lean the way you do - being an advocate for myself and searching out solutions that require me to make changes that can help. I have started aquafit and pool walking and they do help. I had an initial back injury at work and herniated L4, L5 and S1 nerve was compressed resulting in loss of feeling in my right foot and significiant pain. At the acute stage of the injury I was on morphine. Since then (10 years later) I have found out that I have a compression fracture in L2 that was described as acute. This pain is different than the herniation. It is quite severe (at times during the day, not all the time) and wraps around my hip and involves the lower right abdomen. MY dr tried about 3 different pain killers and none worked. The next "tier" of drugs were opiates or narcotics and I opted to avoid them. I asked for something to help me sleep instead since the pain kept me up at night. This is working and I am much more able to deal with the pain during the day when I've had a good night's sleep. Not being able to lift anything over 20 pounds was what I was told. And my beautiful grandsons are 25 pounds and 35 pounds! I get the one year old to crawl to me and shimmy up as I lift from a seated position. The older one (3) follows me to a chair and gets into my lap. I cannot give that up! I will look at the website you recommended. Thank you for your advice! Martishka
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I'm so grateful to see this discussion.
@riverqueen1305, we recommend not sharing your email address publicly on Connect. We don't want you to get unwanted spam. Instead we encourage members to share more personal information through private message. If you wish to private message someone or a group of people, simple click their username and then click the envelope icon.
Thanks all. Keep up the great sharing. This helps so many people.
Colleen, Connect Community Director