I need your reassurance

[SmokeyYogi]

Dear fellow-sufferers

I need your help, since my doctor can only take me in in three weeks and I'm in pain and getting scared.
I suffer from health anxiety.

This last month, my back has been hurting like hell in the morning -the, later during the day, it sometimes goes away a little bit, but then gets worse again.
I'm on painkillers all the time. Went to a chiropractor to get my back back to normal, but it only lasted a day or so
-now, I'm so scared it's something dangerous, because my feet and legs are "sleeping" all the time and twitching a lot.
I do yoga and try to stretch a lot and I generally try to sit correctly not to fuck it up even more -but I'm getting scared that it'll never go away ..
Can you help me reassure myself that its just a normal back problem and not a tumor or something like that?
has anyone tried this? (I read that a back usually only hurts for two weeks, and this has been going on for about a month or so!)

thankyouthankyouthankyou

[Peak]

Dear fellow-sufferers

I need your help, since my doctor can only take me in in three weeks and I'm in pain and getting scared.
I suffer from health anxiety.

This last month, my back has been hurting like hell in the morning -the, later during the day, it sometimes goes away a little bit, but then gets worse again.
I'm on painkillers all the time. Went to a chiropractor to get my back back to normal, but it only lasted a day or so
-now, I'm so scared it's something dangerous, because my feet and legs are "sleeping" all the time and twitching a lot.
I do yoga and try to stretch a lot and I generally try to sit correctly not to fuck it up even more -but I'm getting scared that it'll never go away ..
Can you help me reassure myself that its just a normal back problem and not a tumor or something like that?
has anyone tried this? (I read that a back usually only hurts for two weeks, and this has been going on for about a month or so!)

thankyouthankyouthankyou

Whoever wrote what you read that a back usually only hurts for two weeks is talking absolute garbage. I suffer from a bad back and when it first went I was off work for 4 months and it remained painful for about a year in total. I should also point out that there was and is nothing wrong structurally with my spine, I don't have a slipped disc, I don't have any damage to my bones etc etc. All my pain was entirely muscular. The muscles would go into spasm and so severely that they would actually pull the spine slightly out of shape which in turn would cause more muscle spasms.

I'm no expert on bad backs but having lived with mine for about 4 years now I know a bit. What you describe sounds like it could be a pinched nerve which causes your feet and legs to go to sleep. If it is that then your chiropractor needs to find where the nerve is being pinched. It could be that you have a slipped/prolapsed disc but equally it could simply be a posture problem. You will be amazed at how easy it is to put your back out. My osteopath (incidentally I would recommend seeing an osteopath over a chiropractor - I've seen both before and would now only ever see an osteopath) told me that one of her clients suffered for years with lower back pain and couldn't work out why. In the end they found that he was putting his wallet in his back pocket and whenever he sat down his pelvis would tilt slightly because of it, this caused strain on the lower back and hence the pain. I myself put my back out once just by brushing my teeth!

Fear not what you are describing sounds very, very much like plain old boring, perfectly natural back pain and nothing else.

[SmokeyYogi]

Thank you so much. Your story sounds dreadful, but at least the pain is graspable! I find it hard to not think of everything as a symptom of something else and not the disease itself.