Back Injuries SUCKETH!

The day before Thanksgiving I was outside playing with my dog. He pulled hard on his leash when I wasn't expecting it, my knees locked and I slipped a disc in my lumbar spine. I knew when I felt it happen that it was, at some point, going to require a trip to the doctor. That point came about two hours later.

I told the Dr. what happened and that I would probably need an x-ray. He said the x-ray tech was off that day and I would have to go to the hospital to get one. He gave me some samples of a time release muscle relaxer and wrote me a script for ten 50 mg Demerol (which shockingly didn't help my pain at all) and orders to take to the hospital for the x-ray. He also gave me a shot of steroids and a shot of Toradol. Both of those usually work really well when I have a flare up in my back. But not this time. Unfortunately he forgot to write his suspected diagnosis on the order and since his office closed at 12 the hospital couldn't reach him to fix the order and I had to wait til Friday when his office opened again to correct it.

At 930 Friday morning I went back to his office to get the order corrected and told them I needed some more pain medicine. So he gave me 10 more demerol. I went to the hospital and got the x-rays which the doctor will see today. I thought I would be ok thru the rest of the weekend. I was wrong.

Saturday I toughed it out even though I could feel the swelling getting worse and getting up and down was near impossible. I ate the pain pills which didn't seem to help all that much. I know that it's serious pain when Demerol won't fix it. That theoretically should have knocked me into next week.

On Sunday I lost my ability to get up and down without substantial assistance altogether and my ability to walk was starting to be affected. It was taking me 10 minutes to move from the living room to the bedroom. I couldn't lift my right leg at all...just had to kind of slide it along. This was some serious hurt.

I decided to go to the ER because I was too scared to wait til Monday. Not being able to walk and being able to feel the swollen disc in my back scared me badly. I took my pain medicine that I had left to the ER so they could see that I had been taking them as prescribed. I told the Dr. about the set of x-rays I had done on Friday. He looked at them and told me I needed an MRI.

My blood pressure was really high when I got to the ER. It was 191/134. My BP usually runs 120/80 and has for years. The ER Dr. prescribed another shot of steroids, a shot of muscle relaxer and a whopping shot of morphine. As I sat on the edge of the bed and waited for my meds I started feeling very dizzy and sick. I broke out in a cold sticky sweat and thought I was going to throw up and pass out. My blood pressure cuff came on and checked my BP again and it had dropped to 55/34. The nurse came running in asking if I was ok. She had to help me lay back and then got a cool rag for my head. My back was screaming and I couldn't have any of the shots until my BP got back up to something resembling normal. That took about 45 minutes.

When my BP had reached an acceptable level she gave me my shots. Before she gave me the morphine she made sure I had someone with me that could drive me home. I had her go and fetch my husband from the lobby. She gave me all three shots and then started teasing me about the morphine making me loopy. Except that it didn't make me loopy. A big shot of that stuff should have had me on Jupiter in a matter of minutes. But I hardly felt it at all. And it didn't do much of anything for my back.

This morning my back feels a little better. I can tell some of the swelling is down because I can walk, albeit very slowly. However, if I move the wrong way it feels like my spine is going to snap in two. I'll be back at the doctors office this morning to set up an MRI.

I think back pain is one of the worst pains you can have. Your back is the center of the universe when it hurts like that.