I highly recommend checking out Esther Gokhale and her approach to chronic back pain. The gentle traction her methods provide helped me when I had gluteal tendonitis that was excruciating. I also had to cut back on things that aggravated it for quite a while, but without her stretch sitting instruction I could not sit in a car for more than twenty minutes without excruciating pain. She had sciatica herself, and surgery only provided temporary relief, so she learned how to work on posture to heal herself and others.
re: back pain, the question may still remain, is it back or actually hips. Physiatrist is a good idea! for diagnosis and possible PT orders for hips instead of back.
I had lumbar/sciatic acute back pain, turned chronic now, for almost two years. Won't take opiods and can't tolerate NDSAIDS, or even diclofenic gels, because they cause GI distress. So have been doing PT for 20 months, and ablation last December. It does get better, especially in the warmer months, but daily persistence with the PT has been the key. I think a varying level of pain will always be there, but it's tolerable, and I'm functional now.
My then 95 year old husband went to the ER last September for what turned out to be a raging bladder infection and sepsis, caused by a recently removed catheter. His only symptom was extreme weakness. Fortunately it wasn't too late and he was hospitalized for 3 days with massive antibiotics. Yikes! The Urology Dept pushes catheters for retention, but needless to say we have have decided to take our chances and declined to have another one, or self cath, since then.
I tried the Wolverine stack for a nagging shoulder injury. PT wasn’t helping. The peptides did nothing. A couple of cortisone injections from an ortho did though :)
Prior to seeing a physiatrist, the opioid recommending (?negligent?) physician should be asked to order a lumbar MRI. Armed with this information about what may be causing the OP's back pain, the physiatrist can see where an epidural steroid injection might help (voice of experience here), or, if it is a problem like disc herniation or stenosis, might refer to a spine surgeon. My experience has been that the physiatrist will want to know that epidural steroids work well prior to doing radio ablation. The radio ablation, a couple of years ago, helped a lot. In my case, a recent hip x-ray showed "severe spondylosis" (osteoarthritis) in the part of my spine that was visible, and I have to wait until October for an MRI--this is because I have a pacemaker, and the only place in Portland, Maine that will do an MRI on someone with a pacemaker, only does them one day a week. And apparently there are a lot of people in Maine with pacemakers who need MRIs. Meanwhile, I have been taking oral diclofenac for the past fifteen years, and keeping my fingers crossed that it won't damage my kidneys. So far so good.
This was all rather sane … how refreshing.
I highly recommend checking out Esther Gokhale and her approach to chronic back pain. The gentle traction her methods provide helped me when I had gluteal tendonitis that was excruciating. I also had to cut back on things that aggravated it for quite a while, but without her stretch sitting instruction I could not sit in a car for more than twenty minutes without excruciating pain. She had sciatica herself, and surgery only provided temporary relief, so she learned how to work on posture to heal herself and others.
re: back pain, the question may still remain, is it back or actually hips. Physiatrist is a good idea! for diagnosis and possible PT orders for hips instead of back.
I had lumbar/sciatic acute back pain, turned chronic now, for almost two years. Won't take opiods and can't tolerate NDSAIDS, or even diclofenic gels, because they cause GI distress. So have been doing PT for 20 months, and ablation last December. It does get better, especially in the warmer months, but daily persistence with the PT has been the key. I think a varying level of pain will always be there, but it's tolerable, and I'm functional now.
My then 95 year old husband went to the ER last September for what turned out to be a raging bladder infection and sepsis, caused by a recently removed catheter. His only symptom was extreme weakness. Fortunately it wasn't too late and he was hospitalized for 3 days with massive antibiotics. Yikes! The Urology Dept pushes catheters for retention, but needless to say we have have decided to take our chances and declined to have another one, or self cath, since then.
I tried the Wolverine stack for a nagging shoulder injury. PT wasn’t helping. The peptides did nothing. A couple of cortisone injections from an ortho did though :)
Prior to seeing a physiatrist, the opioid recommending (?negligent?) physician should be asked to order a lumbar MRI. Armed with this information about what may be causing the OP's back pain, the physiatrist can see where an epidural steroid injection might help (voice of experience here), or, if it is a problem like disc herniation or stenosis, might refer to a spine surgeon. My experience has been that the physiatrist will want to know that epidural steroids work well prior to doing radio ablation. The radio ablation, a couple of years ago, helped a lot. In my case, a recent hip x-ray showed "severe spondylosis" (osteoarthritis) in the part of my spine that was visible, and I have to wait until October for an MRI--this is because I have a pacemaker, and the only place in Portland, Maine that will do an MRI on someone with a pacemaker, only does them one day a week. And apparently there are a lot of people in Maine with pacemakers who need MRIs. Meanwhile, I have been taking oral diclofenac for the past fifteen years, and keeping my fingers crossed that it won't damage my kidneys. So far so good.