How to Manage Chronic Pain, Back Pain

How to, in a real world sense, be prepared to deal with chronic pain, back pain, cope with chronic inflammation, back aches, back pain medicine, degenerative disc disease, torn cartilage, and the psychological effects of chronic pain.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A strong will
• A lot of patience
• dedication
• raging optimism
• Hope
• honest, thorough doctors
• A good health insurance plan

1. You must understand, I am not a doctor. In NO WAY is what I am saying meant to replace a licensed physicians input. What I am is a twenty-six year old man that has waged the struggle against life altering chronic pain and spinal injury since I was eighteen years old. So hopefully, my insight can prepare you and help you grasp the various possible outcomes of you're situation. And I simply hope that when I talk, you'll listen. Because I know what its like, and have walked the path.
   
   You need to know the extent of your injury. Is this a chronic nagging low back ache? Was this something severe that happened and injured you? Talk with a trusted doctor. I hate to say it but the reality is that you will not get through this process without a doctor involved. They can at the very least begin to diagnose a physical cause of you're pain.
   
   Don't expect them to actually pinpoint your pain except in rare and lucky cases. The misconception about doctors and pain is that doctors have the answer to it's cause. They don't. Back pain is extremely difficult to understand due to the complexity of the spine. Simpler muscle aches, and obvious bulges to cartilage can be identified quickly, but truly difficult chronic pain is often a mystery to them as well as to us.
   
   This is a long article, and doesn't say short answers or steps. Because it's not about that. It's about reality. And I hope it helps for those who are on the long road of chronic injury.

2. GET A SECOND OPINION.
   
   Once you have a basic understanding of your condition, you should take the advice the doctors have given you. For example, when I tore my lumbar muscle on the right hand side, I was prescribed lots and lots of physical therapy for a muscle strain. Unfortunately for myself, I had a torn muscle, not a strained muscle. The therapy that was given to me once I was properly diagnosed was helpful as far as getting my muscles back in shape, but not in repairing the actually damage.
   
   Physical therapy is something to be taken very seriously. It may seem light, and even annoying to have to drive there day in and day out. But trust me on this, if you don't take it as absolutely serious as possible, and actually do the exercises the provide, then you will only recover as far as you have worked to recover.
   
   DO THE WORK NOW, save yourself in the future. You don't want to go down the next roads if you don't.

3. If physical therapy won't help, then you most likely have what will be considered a chronic pain injury, I.E. an injury that will not simply go away. Now, for doctors I believe chronic is listed as any pain that continues for even a few weeks. Well, any of us who have actually had the problem of chronic pain laugh at that idea, because we are talking months, years, day in and day out. I don't say this to scare you, I say this to help to enlighten the reality of a situation possible to you should be stricken with this situation.
   
   Chronic pain coming from the spine is a terrible thing, one that most people will not understand. Here is where the psychology starts to play into it. Many people suffer from "chronic pain" of the low back. Aches after work, small stuff. The focus of my article, and of my life with this condition, is that of the truly injured individual that has a lot to come to terms with in their future. It took my doctors months to finally tell me that I now had torn cartilage in my spine, and narrowing of the discs, which creates a myriad of problems. It also took them that long to tell me that it wouldn't be getting better, in fact worse as I had degenerative disc disease at a somewhat accelerated pace.
   
   If you have an injury that is life long, there is help. But what you need to really wrap your mind around, and believe me it is tough, is that this injury will not be going away. Think of a week, and a month, put "forever" into context, and mentally steel your mind for the possibility, and the courage needed ahead.

4. Be aware of the changes that can take place over time while your body deals with chronic pain. Should it be an extended period of time that your pain will not subside in, six months or more, pay close attention to your mood. Fatigue is common, as when you are resting your body is trying to recuperate against an injury that will not be healed. Sleeping can be more difficult due to discomfort. If necessary, ask your doctor for non narcotic sleeping pills. Specify non narcotic. Fatigue is best combated with a healthy diet, ample rest perhaps even factoring in an extra hour or so for sleep. It pays to take that fifteen minutes to stretch out and let your body decompress during the day as well.

5. Be wary of the psychologic effects of constant pain. Your brains serotonin factory can be stressed, strained, and even depleted in an uphill battle against negative physical feelings. These physical feelings then become mental feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and depression. Understand that these feelings are not you, but a side effect of a long fight your body is waging for you. That these feelings are not your life, that you are a person who has these stresses added to their life, but they are not you. Keep your injury mentally compartmentalized so that it does not invade every facet of your life. If necessary, you may wish to consult a psychiatrist who specializes in chronic pain, as a feeling of loss of what you held as your "former life" can replace your vision of your current life. Should you be stricken by depression, your physical pain will increase. All things in the body are connected. Stay healthy, eat healthy, and stay active.

6. Yoga is a helpful addiction to your regiment of staying healthy. Eating properly fuels you to have the ambition to get up and take your pain head on. Start slow, and progress. Yoga will relax, stretch, and strengthen muscles that you have been neglecting due to your injury. Naturally, as a sufferer of chronic pain, you start moving in ways that let you avoid your injury. This has a dominoe effect, and can actually worsen the pain. Don't keep going as if nothing happened, but understand that if you don't bend down for six months, your hamstrings are going to tighten up. Then they will pull your back muscles tighter causing greater discomfort. STAY FLEXIBLE.

7. Injections are helpful.
   
   Injections of anti inflammatory steroids in the spine can greatly reduce the discomfort of your injury. It will not cure the cause, but it will remedy, if only temporarily, the pain and symptoms. Some are lucky with this, and find lasting relief that stretches for months and years. I myself have had over fifteen injections in the last year and a half to make up for lost time while touring on the road and not being able to take care of myself.
   
   Don't let these problems compile on you. It will take all the longer to undo them and find the root of the problem. OFten, even with the root found, the pain will not be cured, but treatment can be specialized.

8. Traction and inversion
   
   If your spine suffers from a crushing feeling, like you are being squished together in a vice clamp, and you find relief from stretching out on the floor and relaxing, then you may find relief from an inversion table. I have one in my basement. It allows me to safely hang upside down by my feet in adjustable increments that allows me to decompress my spine. What this did for me initially is relieve the acute pain, and instead let what I called the "noisy pain" dissipate. To me, noisy pain is the pain that spreads through the entire low back, though the source is in the small of my back at my L4 and L5 disc. With the noisy pain gone, I was able to feel more accurately where the pain was emanating from, which led to getting injections, which helped the inflammation as well as the throbbing nerve down my leg.

9. A strong mind is needed to combat a weak body. Stay healthy. You will find a harmony with your injury, as strange as that may sound.

10. There are a million different gadgets online and on TV that are said to cure back pain. Don't waste your time. There is no "cure", there is only treatment to varying degrees of success. Most people with a legitimate injury will not find a completely pain free fix, but may find a treatment that lets them live their lives with an acceptable level of pain. To me, hearing those words "acceptable" and "pain" triggered a war in my mind, a fight that I would not let myself lose. There is no amount of pain acceptable to me. Clouded judgment, clouded thoughts and mind, depression, limited activity... this is not the life for me. But it took me years of slow, methodical process to develop what worked for me. My case is extreme, but not as extreme as they come.

11. Chiropractics.
    
    Again, each of these treatments take a few weeks of actual dedication to see the results, and often a combination of them will help you get where you want to be. Chiropractic care allowed me to avoid the pain through manipulation by going to a chiropractor that utilized an old fashioned table that he physically used to manipulate my low back, as opposed to the new pneumatic tables that "drop" and align your spine. This coupled with other alignments helped to alleviate the pain, but after a few months I had run my course with chiropractic care and found it a temporary fix to a permanent problem. That said, it may work longer for you. If you slipped a disc, a chiropractor can maybe help. If you have degenerative disc disease and torn cartilage like I do, then it probably won't last.

12. I remember when I was just newly eighteen. And my doctor finally had the "umph" to tell me that I was not going to be getting better. It's a challenging thing, to understand the reality of "forever" at the immortal age of eighteen. I read through blogs and things online, researched a bit and found lots of terms like "accomplish your goals" and "lessen your symptoms" when all I wanted to hear was "cure". The reality is, you need to have goals set for yourself and you need to be prepared to meet them. Don't be discouraged when you have done lots of physical therapy, chiro, and inversion, then go into your doctor and say it still hurts. They will do another x ray and say things look normal. Well...of course they "look" normal, you just spent thousands on getting everything set in the right place. But it still hurts. DUH! And don't get discouraged when you get the injections, which are HARDLY as bad as everyone says and the relief is great, but you realize that you can still feel the pieces moving around inside in the wrong way. The problem wasn't cured, just treated. Since I have injured myself and was too foolish to not sign the paper saying it was work related, thinking I would bounce back, and then basing my treatment off of saying that I was hurt by playing in my band and jumping around like nuts because I half thought it was true and I also wanted the treatment to help me with my future, not my past... I have toured the united states coast to coast over fifteen times. Dropped out of film school when signed after DIY touring, secured my record deal, recorded and released an album nationally, MTV, rolling stone, the whole deal. I have written screenplays, graphic novels, made mixed media, and now I finally have found a small harmony where I can scrape by monetarily on art and a boring old J.O.B. So you know what...
    
    Don't you dare tell me it can't be done. In that same period I became chronically depressed, drank thousands of gallons of alchohol because it numbed the physical pain, had to deal with the issues of approaching fame while battling depression, drugs, parties, press, girls, all the normal stuff of a 21 year old guy becoming twenty six, and dealing with this the whole time. I wasn't always smart. I wasn't always right. But now, avoid my mistakes, take this seriously, and take care of yourself. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, how I went through it. But now, I take it the best I can, and realize that treatment is better then dwindling.

13. Prescription Medicine.
    
    Take NON NARCOTIC medicine if you must. I take ****(ehow blanks the name out, so phonetically it is pronounced Uhl-Tram) ER 100 mg tablets once a day. They are super expensive, and I can barely afford it. Sometimes I have to skip a day and it's bad... thats my insurance, maybe not yours. These pills allow me to not feel "high" on a pain killer, instead allowing the pain to subside over a twenty-four hour constant release, and I can go about my day. I mix this with yoga, healthy diet, and exercise. A body at rest tightens up over time.
    
    I also take Skelaxin, a muscle relaxer that is also way to expensive for me. But it allows me to release muscles spasm and tightness in my back while allowing me to retain the motor function necessary for posture and balance. Basically, I don't get all jelly like and numb, and my muscles still hold my bones well so they don't slip around and hurt me further.
    
    Again, now if only I could afford them. There are generics, but not of the same type of delivery. Twenty-four hour relief does not work as well with generic twelve hour pills. Thats just how it is.

14. YOU. CAN. DO THIS.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't give up. It is A PROCESS.
• I will be adding more to this article as I am able to return to it and updating it. I have a plethora of knowledge on the subject, but not the time in the day to put it all down at once! Check back.
• Don't let yourself reach that plateau where you are feeling better, you have worked hard with physical therapy, made your appointments, gotten injections, taken the pills, whatever you do to get well, and then stop. Getting that relief is the whole point, but finally feeling it can easily make us turn off the survival mode in our brain that keeps us hungry, fired up, and focused on achieving freedom from pain. If you stop, the pain comes back. This is the beginning of your understanding that the truth path to your pain free life is an entire healthy lifestyle change, an overhaul that is often met with resistance, but slowly, one step at a time, you will get there!! Best of luck!

[AnneZ]

on 4/8/2009 ICE! ICE! ICE!

[bethandlee]

on 4/6/2009 An inspiring and detailed article. You sound like you've tried it all and came up with what works best for you. This will help many who have chronic back pain. 5*

[AdirondackTrina]

on 4/6/2009 I've had a fair amount of success with a chiropractor recommended massage chair. I got mine on ebay, and it is a life saver. Great article!!Ü

[kaytay]

on 4/6/2009 great tips on managing chronic pain. I get tired of taking so many pain relievers. thanks for sharing

[jull14]

on 4/5/2009 Thanks for this great article, it was very helpful to me. I have back pain for more than two weeks now and it is very difficult to even walk. Thanks for the info.