Re Lil if you x-ray a huge sample of the general public, you'll find that many many-- if not most-- people have "bulging discs" and no pain whatsoever This is partially/mostly true.
A lot of people have narrowed distances between vertebrae and bulges that don't cause problems, but some bulges that press on some nerves cause a loss in muscle strength, even to a point the muscle becomes atrophied.
In 1981, after 3 months of trying several things and a loss of muscle strength to the point I was dragging my toe on the floor when I tried to walk normally, and having pain and feeling like I wanted someone to shoot me, and only sleeping a couple hours on the floor every night, I decided enough was enough.
It took over a year for most of the muscle strength to be regained and I now have about 80% of my ability to lift the same amount of weight with my right and left big toe, one of the tests for how a damaged or pinched nerve effects locomotion.
Re Bear I don't think disk issues show up on x-rays. You may be able to see if there is less space between the vertebrae than there should be (which could indicate a bulging or ruptured disk) but it won't show the actual disk. That is what I saw on my X-rays, just a narrow space.
At the time of my surgery, they did myelogram (sp) IE inject a dye in the spinal column, X-ray the dye shape and look for any narrowing spots of the x-ray-able dye, that was only an indication of a potential bulge. I watched the x-ray monitor? as the doc carried out the procedure on me.
In 1981 they had to open you up to see if there was a bulge. The nerve damage/bulge caused muscle weakness, if that matched the narrowed dye shape on the X-ray, then the doc made a reasonable diagnosis that surgery was called for. All of this was to determine the general location to start the cutting.
About the same time, some places in the medical field was doing injections to the bulge, so the bulge would disintegrate with the chemical from a pit of some fruit. It was less invasive, took longer to reduce the size of the bulge and had to be repeated in some cases.
I think MRI's made a big improvement in diagnosing soft tissue problems as disks are considered soft tissue.
(also pain shooting down my leg and numbness in my foot) that I finally had the surgery Me too. That was in 1981. I started to get a repeat of the symptoms in 1986 but was sort of fired before I got into full bore numbness and pain. That is when I decided I had to do another type of work. The heavy lifting and bending at work was at the root of my back problems.
Well, since then I have almost been feeling normal but never got into the rut I was in in 1981.
Steady doses of ibuprofen and ice it for 20 minutes every hour. That and some heat and exercises, baring my one emergency-room trip, is about what I do now.
There is still a stress and memory factor to my back pain. I hope to remedy some of my symptoms with information that might be contained in the book.
There was definitely a stigma attached I wanted to touch on a different type of stigma and that is the stigma of being called a malinger or downright lazy and using back pain to get out of having to go to work. IE being labeled a free loader or wanting to be on the dole as they say in the UK.
I even had some people say "must be nice not going to work." At that time I would have worked 50 hours a week for 40 hours pay if I didn't have the back pain. So what do people know about stigma and back pain? Some do, some don't.
After I was told not to come back to work in 1986, I applied for several light duty jobs but couldn't get much more than a quick interview. I wanted to work so bad that I would have taken almost anything, even telemarketing, which I later did but that was after college.
Even after college I had a difficult time finding work. I must have applied for 150 jobs and just recently shredded over 100 rejection letters.
Right now i am taking care of Lou a little more and letting some things ride.
