dianaschnuth

Way back in April, I thought that spin class would be a good way to “open up” my lower back to alleviate some of the nerve pain.

Boy, was I wrong.

That was about the worst thing I’ve ever done to myself. I hosed my back and had to make a mid-month chiropractor visit (which I rarely need to do) for pain management. According to Dr. Smith, I managed to rotate one of my vertebrae.

Yikes.

This month, I got to make another mid-month chiro visit. See, I’m used to the constant low-level ache in my lower back — not really even rating on the scale of one-to-ten, but more of an awareness, a distraction — and I’m used to the slight numbness in my hip and left leg that my offset L5 causes by pressing on a nerve. What I’m not used to is the sharp, localized pain I had a couple weeks ago.

Turns out that my bulging disc at L4 was to blame this time — probably from lugging around a clingy 30-pound Mama’s boy who demands, “Carry you?” Dr. Smith prescribed some yoga poses: cobra and upward dog, to be done while watching TV in the evenings. The backward flexing helps relieve the pain of the bulging disc, but it had the potential to make my spondylo at L5 act up. She actually told me that if the cobra pose made things worse, I should stop and accept her apologies. Luckily, cobra did the trick.

It’s funny that I have two very different back problems that have two very different ways of relieving pain (backbends vs. forward bends and hamstring stretches), and relieving one could exacerbate the other.

I make a point to attend my Thursday yoga class every week, and I’ve been trying to add a core strength class into my schedule whenever I can. There’s one that the fitness center at my work has been offering lately called Core Fusion, which mixes Pilates and upper body strength and some yoga. I absolutely love it — it’s always a huge, packed class with all ranges of fitness levels. (It’s a testament to how uncomfortable I still am with my body image that I find myself scanning any fitness class for anyone who is less fit than I am.) The stronger I can get my core, the more likely it is that everything will stay in alignment and not cause me any grief.

I don’t have any dreams of returning to running. Considering that this condition has surfaced relatively early in my life, I don’t plan to do anything that could make my life miserable down the road. Cycling — maybe someday. Lifting — if I’m careful and don’t do anything stupid. Yoga — I’d like to keep with it and improve my form, actually. Improve my balance, strengthen my core, and maybe finally own crocodile pose someday.

I went in to see my chiropractor last Wednesday about the results of my MRI. I’d looked at the images that the technician had given me, but I’m no medical professional, so I had no idea what they really meant.

Dr. Smith gave me a copy of the findings, which still needed some explanation. Bottom line? Nothing too bad. If I keep going to the chiropractor and take pain meds and anti-inflammatories as needed, I’ll continue to live relatively pain-free… until I don’t.

Details:

• 50% narrowing of the disc space height at L5-S1 (the MRI didn’t go up past my thoracic vertebrae, so the M.D. who did the analysis had no way of knowing about my extra transitional vertebra — technically, it would be L6-S1).
• 1-2mm of bulging at L3-4.
• 1mm of facet fluid seen at L4-5 and L5-S1.
• The alignment of the lumbar vertebral bodies is preserved.

My chiropractor patted herself on the back for my vertebrae being in alignment, but it turns out that an MRI will not properly show spondylolisthesis in all cases, due to the nature of how it’s done (having to lay supine, on one’s back). I did a little research into what the hell “facet fluid” was, and came across an article: The correlation between exaggerated fluid in lumbar facet joints and degenerative spondylolisthesis. In this article, the authors explain that degenerative spondylolisthesis is not always identifiable using an MRI, since the patient is laying down and the vertebrae naturally re-align themselves (to a degree). The presence of excess facet fluid — which “is the result of degeneration of the synovial joints” — has a positive correlation with spondylolisthesis.

In layman’s terms: the fluid is another way of showing that my vertebrae are out of alignment when I’m standing upright and the joints are going to shit.

Another bit of knowledge I found while doing some research has led me to sign up for spin class this Friday. I discovered this great page, A Patient’s Guide to Spondylolisthesis, which goes into much greater detail than I’d ever have time to do with my chiropractor. It explained a bit more why I have the pain I do (although Dr. Smith did clear that question up recently, too), and it gives even more examples of non-surgical ways to relieve the pain — such as increasing flexibility in the low back and hamstrings (Dr. Smith prescribed me yoga for that), and use of a stationary bike to help open up the spaces where the nerve roots exit (hence my sudden interest in spinning). It also details the surgical last resorts, like removing part of the vertebrae to stop them from pinching the nerve, then fusing the vertebrae together so that no further slippage can occur. (Yikes.)

At my appointment with her, Dr. Smith told me that it really boils down to me seeing her once a month from now on, doing yoga from now on, continuing to keep my weight down — basically, keep doing what I’m doing, but do it forever.

This isn’t going away… but it’s not getting worse, either.

At my February chiropractor visit, I complained to Dr. Smith about a numbness in my left leg, especially when sitting on the floor or laying on my left side to sleep. She told me that I should call her for another appointment in a week if it didn’t get better after my adjustment.

It didn’t really, but I opted to see if I could just deal with it. I mean, it wasn’t painful, exactly, just uncomfortable. Stiff. Numb. Weird. I learned how to adjust my hips a certain way when I laid in bed, and I stopped sitting on the floor to play with Connor. Problem solved, right?

When I went in for my March visit last Friday, she asked (as she always does) how my lower back was feeling. I had to tell her that the leg was still going numb at times. So, she flipped through my chart to see what I’d been complaining of in the past months, and saw that the leg thing was a relatively new occurrence. Kind of a red flag. She’d been thinking about having me get an MRI from the beginning, she admitted, but now she was sure. She assured me that I’m doing all the right things: doing yoga to stretch and strengthen, getting my weight down, and (although she didn’t say this out loud) no longer running.

She called in a prescription, I guess you’d say, for an MRI at a local medical imaging firm, and told me to come in a couple days after my MRI to discuss the results.

Today was the MRI.

Continue reading →