needle day

My turn for needle day. This week so far I've watched two friends on twitter/facebook go through big neck stuff (awesome needle in the ol' spine pic *thumbs up*), so mine is little tiny stuff by comparison. However, instead of turning pain OFF, we'll be doing a nerve conduction study and turning pain ON. I have no idea if we'll be doing both legs or just one, the goal being to discover exactly why I get the stabbing pains in my left foot for weeks after I trigger my L5S1 compression by lifting Bunny from any position, both sitting and standing.

Detection of lumbosacral nerve root compression with a novel composite nerve conduction measurement.
"This preliminary study suggests that a novel composite nerve conduction measurement, based on F-wave latency parameters, may be highly effective at detecting magnetic resonance imaging-confirmed lumbosacral nerve root compression. Because these measurements provide objective evidence of functional nerve root compromise and are noninvasive, they may be of diagnostic value to clinicians evaluating patients presenting with low back and leg pain."

Can EMG/Nerve tests diffferentiate between cord compression and nerve root compression???
"The EMG's can isolate if it is a root or the cord. The cord most times would be a bilateral affect, where as a root of course only one side."

I'm planning on taking it easy for a few days afterward since fibro is a nerve condition.
more pain since EMG and Nerve conduction
"I had pain after the EMG and swear I still feel the 2" needle probe they were trying to get in my shin. I'm sorry to hear you're having pain still. I've tried massage blocking the signals and it's seem to have helped. Please call your Neurologist to follow up. I wish I could help more. Thinking of you. Take care. Charry"

I'm married to a guy who faints dead away just giving blood and swears he'd rather die than go any further than that with a needle because he'd go into convulsions or something. While I'm not actually looking forward to it, I've come to realize after so many years of pain that I kind of like it. That realization was a little disturbing at first, wasn't sure how to feel about that since I purposely and very conscientiously avoid self harming. I've noticed during deep tissue work weeks in physical therapy that I sometimes come away almost too delirious to drive because I'm so high right after my pain threshold has been lowered, which is weird since I don't medicate, but I discovered how natural spinal opioids and receptors work, so I imagine that's it in a nutshell. I tend not to notice 'real' pain, where I really have a broken bone or someone points out that I'm bleeding, because I'm so overwhelmed all the time with what I call 'ghost' pain. (Pain charts are ridiculous contraptions for those of us with pain syndromes.)

I've been through nerve conduction studies before on my arms, they suck, and I'm sure I'll be pretty pissy for awhile after I've had needles in my legs and feet pinging nerves on purpose. Anyone who has never had deep throbbing nerve pain hasn't LIVED. You cannot comprehend how absolutely beautiful life is with a lower pain level until you've been tortured on purpose for a medical study.

I'm not a pain advocate. I don't think it's wise to self harm, especially with MRSA and VRSA and other big germ baddies on the loose all around us, and much more prevalent than most people realize. HIV is nothing compared to those.

By the way, if thoughts of torturing someone for science excites you, there's a career field for that.


:edit: Imagine the SpongeBob narrator saying "Two hours later."
So far, so good. No mutating into an alien life form, nothing disturbing the Force, just a great baseline for if/when any of the pain changes/gets worse. They can only do so much with "We don't see any damage."
So for all I know, that nasty weird nerve pain might never have been a problem for someone without a fibro feedback loop amping up to Zaphod Beeblebrox levels of weirdness. I'm not bitter, though. Some people wanna see returns on their suffering, they want proof, and I'm all HELL no, do ~*not*~ give me proof. I don't care who says what about it's all in my mind (that's a real thing that is finally turning into Oh yeah, now we can see part of what's causing the feedback probs in fibro research). I'd much rather no one believe me and think I'm a hypochondriac wanting negative attention to feed my psychosis than have real, actual damage. Besides, this is standardized across the board testing for a very specific determination, not a validation of whether something actually happened.
Some people go deep into rock aura magnetic energy stuff, others go into pandimensional reasons for our sufferings that involve quantum physics and dark matter (srsly, not kidding), I'm just all Tell me how I'm moving wrong and I'll take it from there. Because that's a real thing that can be corrected. I think the greatest change we can make in health care is for insurance to pay for weekly massages for everyone.
This was on the wall there. I thought it was pretty clever.

TMI time, but you'll thank me

You know your physical therapy on lower back pain is working when sex pain dramatically decreases.

Sex and Low Back Pain
Best and Worst Sex Positions for Back Pain

I've been in and out of physical therapy for low back pain for a couple of years, and this round is more fine tuning specific weak spots because I started getting shooting nerve pain down to my foot several months ago, on top of a few other new pains. It wasn't exactly back to the drawing board, but I'm evidently still doing something that triggers enough extra nerve compression at L5S1 that it felt like everything suddenly got way worse. Well, they say it's a little worse, but still manageable, and the two big things I'm working on now are being aware of what I'm doing so I avoid the trigger movements (no more picking up little kids, basically) and tightening up my core strength around the muscle areas allowing the compression to worsen. Some people have more damage than me and less pain, others have less damage and more pain, so low back pain is a very individual experience.

I bet a lot of you didn't know that sex pain can be caused by nerve compression in the lower back. Even if you have no other back or leg pain, whatever position or movements you're doing could be all it takes, and wham, it feels like someone ripped a new hole or a stab goes down your leg, or suddenly your hip locks up and you're beating out a charley horse in your glut.

When my lower back first flared back up again, I couldn't tell it was my back. I had nasty pain all around my pelvis and it kept feeling like I had a terrible bladder infection. Over time I've been checked and cleared for several things, including cancers and tumors. Nothing was ever wrong. It wasn't until I went to physical therapy and started core strength training that I could tell (feel) it actually started in my back. The nerve compression made that spot in my back feel numb. I could tell, though, that simple things like sitting or standing too long made all the other pain worse, and I had to learn all over how to properly stretch, move, and even walk.

Part of all that was sex pain, and it got pretty excruciating off and on. I could never tell when it would be bad, and it would hit so hard and fast in the middle of it that I'd double up in pain. I blamed it on aging, a mild cystocele that my gyno assured me wasn't a problem, hormones, fibromyalgia- but it always gets better with physical therapy for my lower back.

The L5S1 is the most common site for lower back pain because that joint connection takes the most weight, and the nerve there branches out in such a way that all kinds of weird sensations or pain or numbness can travel around in the oddest ways, even if you still seem to be fully functional and capable.

Describing a new syndrome in L5-S1 disc herniation: Sexual and sphincter dysfunction without pain and muscle weakness (click)

"A syndrome in L5-S1 disc herniation with sexual and sphincter dysfunction without pain and muscle weakness was noted. We think that it is crucial for neurosurgeons to early realise that paralysis of the sphincter and sexual dysfunction are possible in patients with lumbar L5-S1 disc disease."

That basically means that sex pain and/or dysfunction might be a first warning sign of disc degeneration years ahead of disc damage showing up on x-rays or MRI. This goes for both men and women.

I can tell you from experience that pain meds and sitting around on a couch do NOT make this any better, even if the pain lessens. The only thing that has genuinely improved this kind of pain for me is core stretches and exercises specifically designed to strengthen the muscles that support the spine. (That is why it's called core.)

Even if you normally don't work out and hate exercise, you will love core if you spend a little time getting through the tough first day or week, and after that it becomes the tough first few minutes, and over time your body will almost beg you to do something core. Like hang a leg off a bed a certain way. I didn't know that was a core stretch that can relieve pressure right there on that spot, and after I've done the core stuff, which takes about 15-20 minutes if I do everything I'm told, the pain lessens quite dramatically, especially now that I've been using physical therapy somewhat regularly to control my pain. No pills I ever took made the pain lighten up like that, and I've taken handfuls of gigantic and very colorful pills in my life. I was even crippled for a couple of years because the pain was so bad. My worst year I thought I'd never be able to dress myself again.

Or have sex.

I'm having sex, guys.

mean is how I show my love

There's a new policy agreement I had to sign before my physical therapy assessment this time. They have so many no-shows and cancellations that they're losing a substantial amount of money flow, and THAT, my friends, is why insurance is so stupidly high. Don't blame it all on poor people and ERs. Blame the people who have insurance and medicare who are purposely noncompliant with care plans.

Physical therapy is hard work. It's not for the faint of heart. I've been there- in and out of wheelchairs, using a cane, needing a driver and assistance in and out of the shower, and help getting dressed. I know exactly what it feels like to be a burden and spiral down a black hole of hopelessness. I'm such a good friend with pain that I actually miss it when it's gone, because I almost get high off of it, even without meds.

It's so easy to take the whiny way out. I hurt. Yeah, join the club. I have a headache. My worst headache lasted 6 weeks and I got at most ten minutes of sleep at a time that entire time, because it was so bad I couldn't even lay down, so I hear ya. It's hard. So is having babies, and that's not stopping anybody. I can't do it. Then curl up and die, you big baby.

That's me talking to my head. I have said all the things everyone else has said. And then I kicked my butt and slammed my head into a wall and GOT TO WORK. I got pissed off enough to get up and do something about my whining.

It was hard believing I could do this. Every morning I had to actually literally SAY "I can do this." Sometimes it was just a whisper in my mind while I cried. Sometimes it was a hopeless defiant shout in the dark. But many times I really did say it out loud on my way in to physical therapy.

Yesterday was hard. I'm in a better place than I've been in years, but it was still hard getting through another assessment and core review. I'm not out of the woods. I can't just flop my body into a chair and pop pain pills when I sit too long. I can't be lazy without backsliding into more pain and disability and eventually major surgery. Yes, I can ask them to turn the pain off and risk paralysis and sepsis and a whole list of other possibilities in a 50/50 gamble, because that's what surgical pain management is. It doesn't fix anything. It actually harms the body even more so you just can't feel it. There's no guarantee how long it'll last, and once it's done you can't go back and undo it. I know too many people this has backfired on. It's way too easy to skip ahead to the last resort and then hear the horror stories- multiple procedures melting down into meth addiction trying to handle pain that simply can't be killed off. Procedures that went well but then catastrophic fail happened after a blood clot in the spine, making the disability so much worse than it was before. Pain being replaced with maddening numbness. Asking someone to cauterize a nerve is such a leap of faith, I can't imagine doing that unless I was ready to commit suicide anyway. My psychologist told me a few times I'm a cynic. That's putting it mildly. I look at it like this- if a surgeon tells me he won't do pain control on me even in radiology with a needle because my history contraindicates success (nice of him to be honest), then I'm going to find another way to live like this.

There is this wonderful program in place to help people who are sinking into quagmires of pain and disability. It's called physical therapy. It's there for just about everyone- medicare is very supportive, and most insurance plans will take the brunt of the cost. All it takes is a person telling their doctor they'd like some help with a specific pain- how to move correctly, how to strengthen that area, how to become more functional around the house. I can say from experience that it's like working miracles, but it takes participation. You can get a whole team of people in on it, and they'll all tell you the same thing- pain shots, PT, and even surgery all work better with regular stretching and exercise, and good nutrition and hydration. You wanna heal? Cut the crap. You don't make a car run better pouring sugar in the gas tank. You don't stick a cigarette in your dog's mouth. You don't give babies beer bottles. You don't pick a fantasy football player who doesn't make the workouts. The logic is sound. All we have to do is apply it.

Several years ago I made a decision. Do I want to LIVE? If I don't save myself, no one else has to. Get out there and GET TO WORK. It made differences nothing else ever did.

I went through a little backsliding the last 8 months, so I'm back in GET TO WORK mode. I'm slapping myself to get up and MOVE, I'm plugging my ears and singing lalalalala when my head whines that this is too hard, I'm gritting my teeth and psyching up and telling myself that actors and professional athletes are where they are because they were willing to work for it. There is nothing in this world saying a writer doesn't need that kind of one on one physical training, as well. Sitting in a chair writing words isn't easy. Anyone who thinks it's easy is an idiot.

I know I sound mean. Sometimes you gotta get mean if you wanna stick around longer for your family. Whining my way to an early grave is unacceptable to me. I've got things to do, people to meet, a world to change...