One year of back pain: anniversary edition
A full year has passed since I herniated a disc in my lumbar spine.
I’d love to be able to report that my injury has fully healed and that everything is just as it was before, but sadly that is not the case. Instead, my back pain has been a constant companion throughout the year.
But there is some good news too: although I can count the number of pain-free days on one hand, the pain has greatly decreased in both frequency and intensity.
Most days begin with a stiff back, which I can treat with light movement and stretching. As the day progresses, I often get a mild but constant pain in my lower back muscles. I can counter this by lying down to rest my back. And then there’s the one kind of pain I dread the most: an intense, sharp, and stabbing pain that shoots through my entire back. Luckily, that one is rare – it occurs only occasionally, after certain movements (surprisingly, even sneezing the wrong way can trigger it).
My journey to recovery hasn’t been a steady one either. Due to overtraining (doing too much, too soon, with poor form), I’ve experienced a couple of follow-up injuries. Those setbacks were hard to swallow, especially emotionally, but I’ve slowly recovered from them too.
Physical therapy is perhaps the biggest contributor to my recovery. I’ve had the good fortune of finding an excellent therapist and being able to work with him twice a week. Here I’ve learned how to mobilize, stretch, and strengthen parts of my body that had long been neglected.
I’ve integrated all the things I’ve learned at physical therapy into a daily exercise regimen, which I follow religiously. A couple of people were astonished by my seemingly endless motivation to exercise (often in the evenings, while traveling, or when I’m with other people). But each time I told them the same thing: pain is a great motivator!
I still hope that one day I can be fully pain-free again – after all, I did have a couple of days where I didn’t notice my back at all.
But I’ve also read about the changes that have already occurred and will continue to occur in my body due to that injury. So I’m also trying to get used to the fact that my back will have good and bad days for the rest of my life.