So, I realize that this blog will be controversial. Those in the Western Medicine world will come up with a litany of things to throw at me. To them I say, "get your own blog." I am discussing my story, and only my story, and from my perspective what I have gone through and continue to with respect to my ongoing issues with my back. I have great respect for both traditions, however, it is not the only game in town. I guess that you can see where this is headed already. Here goes...
Since my fractured spine when I was 16 years old, I have had many ups and downs with my back. Yoga has been an amazing godsend for me and has helped keep me in a fairly good place for many years. However, the stress I had in my life, contributed by nearly 2.5 hours of driving a day, was undoing any physical yoga practice that I was able to muster the energy to do. Honestly, most days I was too exhausted to practice anything much. For many years I lived in constant pain. Now, the pain usually resulted from overexerting myself or being on my feet too long. I would come home and my husband would give me a bear hug and my back would "crack." Once this happened, the pain would go from an eight to a two or less. This was my usual for many years. Then, a couple of years ago when stress intensified, things got worse. I put on a little extra weight, and I started having ongoing issues with my right hip. As a soft tissue girl, I contributed it to muscle tension, and tried to get regular massages to alleviate this issue. Again, not enough massage, and too much stress and driving equals it not working to well.
About six months ago the pain started to travel around my right hip and down my inner thigh. It nearly got to my knee, and I often had trouble taking my first steps in the morning. I was pushing through the day and I knew that I was going to have to look into something else. I was not sure what the whole problem was. I had noticed that little by little, something was changing in my back because I was no longer to do the same postures I used to. My twists had been challenging and I could twist A LOT farther to one side than the other. When I did, I heard and felt scraping in my lower back. Backbends had become a thing of the past. Suddenly my back had just seized up, and I knew that it was more than tension in my muscles. So, I called my primary care physician.
By the time that I was able to see him, things and progressed to a pretty bad point. So much so, that he was able to push my insurance company to do an MRI, convinced that I had lumbar spine disc issues. I went that week and got my MRI and waited to hear something. For a week I got nothing from my doctor. So, I went to see my chiropractor and he was able to call and receive the MRI report the same day. We reviewed it and there were some surprising things there. Muscle atrophy around my fractured "deformed" vertebrae, and arthritis in all my lumbar facet joints. My disks, however, were apparently perfect.
I was in the middle of moving my home, so that was probably the last time that I got to see my chiropractor. But when I moved in to the new home, I quickly began seeing my old chiropractor, and he also received the MRI report. This was probably a four week period. And although I had called my primary, he still had not called me back. The woman in the office had said that there was some issue she found in their system and that was why they hadn't received the report, but that she had fixed it and they should have it the next day. Still, no word from my primary.
I started chiropractic care with my new/old chiropractor, gently. But he suggested that I try a detox to get my inflammation down. I knew that this was a major problem for me and decided to go for the detox.
I rang up my primary again - now about there months later - and was told that I missed a scheduled appointment to speak to him about my back. Now, I do not miss doctor appointments. And I know that nobody ever called me to schedule one, nor had a ever received the usual confirmation reminder call about it a day or so prior. Yet, they insisted that it had been planned and I had missed it.
In the meantime, I decided to start acupuncture for pain management and also to get the energy moving again in my back. I realize that discussing "energy" with my primary was not anything that he could discuss, so I reserved the opinion to not tell him about these holistic methods, and just do them myself. The first session moved so much energy that I had to sit in the waiting room for about a half an hour before I could leave. The second session started to really get things moving again. I was also a week into my detox, and had lost about five pounds too. The pain no longer radiated down my leg and was isolated to my right hip again. I felt like I was peeling back time, ever so slightly.
So I go see my primary, loaded with my information and he suggested physical therapy and pain management specialist. I stare at him. He gives me the scrips, and I leave the office. I make an appointment with the physical therapist, but the pain management guy can't see me for a month, and I cannot attend the one single appointment that they offer me, so they go into November, with one date when I will be out of the country. The woman on the phone says, "Well, I don't know what you want me to do. You aren't able to come at the times that I am offering you." "Okay," I say, "but you only gave me two dates in two months on specific times." This was greeted with silence, then more distain and attitude. I hang up. My primary gives me another option to call and I make the appointment to see him the next week.
Now two weeks into my detox I am feeling really good physically. I lost about eight pounds, and my daily pain is more consistently a two than an eight. Of course, I have moved and am not driving more than 50 minutes a day now as well as having A LOT less stress. And, there's the acupuncture and chiropractic care that I am doing on a regular basis.
The physical therapist and I have a good rapport. She understands yoga. She suggested three things to do daily, which it cannot hurt to try for a week to see where it gets me. She seems to really understand the two very different issues I am facing: one, the instability in my fracture that will never return due to the muscle atrophy, and two, the pain in my hip associated with years of torture. We decide to work on the later, as the former is a lot more complicated an issue.
The pain management guy is a spinal surgeon. Who knew? He listens to my story and does a little exam. He says, "you have a 51-year-old-back with an old compression fracture. Surgery is not suggested, and you seem to be doing everything else that I would recommend. Have you tried CBD?"
In fact, yes, I did a bout of CBD. It worked great initially, then nope. So, I consider finding another product that may better suite me. I thank him and leave, knowing that basically, I have to find another way to live with my issues, until I am so incapacitated that they have to do spinal fusion. Great...
Had I not gone to my chiropractor and started a detox, and then added acupuncture and certain specific yoga that I detailed for me, I would not be feeling better. Even the destress and the less commute, I would still be in pain from the chronic misuse and spinal, I am going to use the word "decay." None of the western medical doctors will say that I have disk issues. But my chiropractor says looking at the image there certainly appears to be disk issues. Even if the surgeon did admit that, he would still not recommend anything, except he can give me a nerve block if it starts to travel down my leg again.
I certainly cannot say that I am at peace with this. My out of pocket expense for holistic practices has been a lot, but it has worked. The medical insurance that I pay a lot for has provided me with little to nothing - except the images so that I can see for myself what is happening inside of me, and so that I can figure out the best way to handle that on my own.
If I am 80 years old and still able to lay down on the floor and crack my back in on a daily basis, I guess I will be happy about that. But wouldn't it be great to be able to wash dishes without being in pain after and have my back "out?" I can't stop doing things for myself because I am a person that does things, and I also do not have the luxury to pay people to do things for me. I pay for 100% of my medical insurance, and it provides me with imaging and emergency care. That is what I am using it for moving forward. The lack of concern or care from the various offices astounded me. I felt so unimportant, so neglected, so mistreated by office staff in the western medical offices. Yet, my chiropractor will spend an extra twenty minutes talking to me about whatever I want, and my Acupuncturists's Mother sat with me for nearly a half an hour until I felt okay to walk out. And, at the end of the day, western medicine basically said, do these few yoga poses and try CBD oil.
My story is unique. Nobody else in the world has a compression fracture where I do nor a spine that has mutated and changed in the way that mine has. I'm not in an ongoing acute phase anymore because I did things in my life to change that and because as a holistic practitioner, I understand what I need to do to heal my body so that I am, at the very least, much better than I was. Will my back change? No. Will it continue to be terribly unstable? Yes. Will I have to work mindfully and diligently to ensure that it does not get any worse? Absolutely. Will Western Medicine help me with any of that? Probably not. Will Holistic practices? You betcha.
I don't know what else to say. I certainly appreciate having doctors and my insurance. If I get sick or break something, I appreciate that. But, for this particular issue in my life, I have to say, once again, another checkmark for the Holistic practices.
Since my fractured spine when I was 16 years old, I have had many ups and downs with my back. Yoga has been an amazing godsend for me and has helped keep me in a fairly good place for many years. However, the stress I had in my life, contributed by nearly 2.5 hours of driving a day, was undoing any physical yoga practice that I was able to muster the energy to do. Honestly, most days I was too exhausted to practice anything much. For many years I lived in constant pain. Now, the pain usually resulted from overexerting myself or being on my feet too long. I would come home and my husband would give me a bear hug and my back would "crack." Once this happened, the pain would go from an eight to a two or less. This was my usual for many years. Then, a couple of years ago when stress intensified, things got worse. I put on a little extra weight, and I started having ongoing issues with my right hip. As a soft tissue girl, I contributed it to muscle tension, and tried to get regular massages to alleviate this issue. Again, not enough massage, and too much stress and driving equals it not working to well.
About six months ago the pain started to travel around my right hip and down my inner thigh. It nearly got to my knee, and I often had trouble taking my first steps in the morning. I was pushing through the day and I knew that I was going to have to look into something else. I was not sure what the whole problem was. I had noticed that little by little, something was changing in my back because I was no longer to do the same postures I used to. My twists had been challenging and I could twist A LOT farther to one side than the other. When I did, I heard and felt scraping in my lower back. Backbends had become a thing of the past. Suddenly my back had just seized up, and I knew that it was more than tension in my muscles. So, I called my primary care physician.
By the time that I was able to see him, things and progressed to a pretty bad point. So much so, that he was able to push my insurance company to do an MRI, convinced that I had lumbar spine disc issues. I went that week and got my MRI and waited to hear something. For a week I got nothing from my doctor. So, I went to see my chiropractor and he was able to call and receive the MRI report the same day. We reviewed it and there were some surprising things there. Muscle atrophy around my fractured "deformed" vertebrae, and arthritis in all my lumbar facet joints. My disks, however, were apparently perfect.
I was in the middle of moving my home, so that was probably the last time that I got to see my chiropractor. But when I moved in to the new home, I quickly began seeing my old chiropractor, and he also received the MRI report. This was probably a four week period. And although I had called my primary, he still had not called me back. The woman in the office had said that there was some issue she found in their system and that was why they hadn't received the report, but that she had fixed it and they should have it the next day. Still, no word from my primary.
I started chiropractic care with my new/old chiropractor, gently. But he suggested that I try a detox to get my inflammation down. I knew that this was a major problem for me and decided to go for the detox.
I rang up my primary again - now about there months later - and was told that I missed a scheduled appointment to speak to him about my back. Now, I do not miss doctor appointments. And I know that nobody ever called me to schedule one, nor had a ever received the usual confirmation reminder call about it a day or so prior. Yet, they insisted that it had been planned and I had missed it.
In the meantime, I decided to start acupuncture for pain management and also to get the energy moving again in my back. I realize that discussing "energy" with my primary was not anything that he could discuss, so I reserved the opinion to not tell him about these holistic methods, and just do them myself. The first session moved so much energy that I had to sit in the waiting room for about a half an hour before I could leave. The second session started to really get things moving again. I was also a week into my detox, and had lost about five pounds too. The pain no longer radiated down my leg and was isolated to my right hip again. I felt like I was peeling back time, ever so slightly.
So I go see my primary, loaded with my information and he suggested physical therapy and pain management specialist. I stare at him. He gives me the scrips, and I leave the office. I make an appointment with the physical therapist, but the pain management guy can't see me for a month, and I cannot attend the one single appointment that they offer me, so they go into November, with one date when I will be out of the country. The woman on the phone says, "Well, I don't know what you want me to do. You aren't able to come at the times that I am offering you." "Okay," I say, "but you only gave me two dates in two months on specific times." This was greeted with silence, then more distain and attitude. I hang up. My primary gives me another option to call and I make the appointment to see him the next week.
Now two weeks into my detox I am feeling really good physically. I lost about eight pounds, and my daily pain is more consistently a two than an eight. Of course, I have moved and am not driving more than 50 minutes a day now as well as having A LOT less stress. And, there's the acupuncture and chiropractic care that I am doing on a regular basis.
The physical therapist and I have a good rapport. She understands yoga. She suggested three things to do daily, which it cannot hurt to try for a week to see where it gets me. She seems to really understand the two very different issues I am facing: one, the instability in my fracture that will never return due to the muscle atrophy, and two, the pain in my hip associated with years of torture. We decide to work on the later, as the former is a lot more complicated an issue.
The pain management guy is a spinal surgeon. Who knew? He listens to my story and does a little exam. He says, "you have a 51-year-old-back with an old compression fracture. Surgery is not suggested, and you seem to be doing everything else that I would recommend. Have you tried CBD?"
In fact, yes, I did a bout of CBD. It worked great initially, then nope. So, I consider finding another product that may better suite me. I thank him and leave, knowing that basically, I have to find another way to live with my issues, until I am so incapacitated that they have to do spinal fusion. Great...
Had I not gone to my chiropractor and started a detox, and then added acupuncture and certain specific yoga that I detailed for me, I would not be feeling better. Even the destress and the less commute, I would still be in pain from the chronic misuse and spinal, I am going to use the word "decay." None of the western medical doctors will say that I have disk issues. But my chiropractor says looking at the image there certainly appears to be disk issues. Even if the surgeon did admit that, he would still not recommend anything, except he can give me a nerve block if it starts to travel down my leg again.
I certainly cannot say that I am at peace with this. My out of pocket expense for holistic practices has been a lot, but it has worked. The medical insurance that I pay a lot for has provided me with little to nothing - except the images so that I can see for myself what is happening inside of me, and so that I can figure out the best way to handle that on my own.
If I am 80 years old and still able to lay down on the floor and crack my back in on a daily basis, I guess I will be happy about that. But wouldn't it be great to be able to wash dishes without being in pain after and have my back "out?" I can't stop doing things for myself because I am a person that does things, and I also do not have the luxury to pay people to do things for me. I pay for 100% of my medical insurance, and it provides me with imaging and emergency care. That is what I am using it for moving forward. The lack of concern or care from the various offices astounded me. I felt so unimportant, so neglected, so mistreated by office staff in the western medical offices. Yet, my chiropractor will spend an extra twenty minutes talking to me about whatever I want, and my Acupuncturists's Mother sat with me for nearly a half an hour until I felt okay to walk out. And, at the end of the day, western medicine basically said, do these few yoga poses and try CBD oil.
My story is unique. Nobody else in the world has a compression fracture where I do nor a spine that has mutated and changed in the way that mine has. I'm not in an ongoing acute phase anymore because I did things in my life to change that and because as a holistic practitioner, I understand what I need to do to heal my body so that I am, at the very least, much better than I was. Will my back change? No. Will it continue to be terribly unstable? Yes. Will I have to work mindfully and diligently to ensure that it does not get any worse? Absolutely. Will Western Medicine help me with any of that? Probably not. Will Holistic practices? You betcha.
I don't know what else to say. I certainly appreciate having doctors and my insurance. If I get sick or break something, I appreciate that. But, for this particular issue in my life, I have to say, once again, another checkmark for the Holistic practices.
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