End Back Pain Forever Archives

End Back Pain Forever: Chapter 2, part 5 #endbackpain

Thursday, May 31st, 2012 at 10:00 am  

In this next segment, I take Hans up on his offer to examine one of my patients. Read what happens next!

Countdown: 5 days until the release of  End Back Pain Forever! #endbackpain

Chapter 2

You Are Not Alone: The Back Pain Epidemic (Part 5)

     Dr. Kraus and I met a week later at Lenox Hill. I had chosen a patient whom I shall call Beth. She was a forty-five year-old woman so defeated by pain after three unsuccessful spinal operations that she could no longer hold a job. Her life had revolved around her work, which was at the core of her sense of self. She was devastated. No one had found a truly successful treatment for her, and I did not believe that anyone could. She was on high doses of morphine, 60 milligrams orally five to six times a day, to relieve her pain.

After reviewing her case history, Dr. Kraus gave her a comprehensive and thoughtful mental and physical examination. Starting with her neck, he used his fingertips to palpate her muscles to distinguish between those that were supple and pain free and those that were stiff and painful. He found five pairs of painful muscles on both sides of the lower back, buttocks, and thighs.  “If these muscles are treated properly,” he told me, “it should reduce or eliminate her pain.” Read the rest of this entry

End Back Pain Forever: Chapter 1, Part 3 (#endbackpain)

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 at 9:45 am  

And now, in the last part of Chapter 1 from End Back Pain Forever, we turn to the story of “Stephanie”. End Back Pain Forever to be released June 5, 2010.

Chapter 1

“Doctor, My Back is Killing Me!”, Part 3

 

Take the case of a patient whom I shall call Stephanie. She is a married attorney who in 2004 began to experience stiffness whenever she she got up out of a chair. She also had problems straightening up if she bent over. This was bothersome, but it was nothing compared to her first attack of spasms in her low back, on the right side. The spasms were incapacitating. She couldn’t walk and had to lie in bed for four days, taking painkillers and muscle relaxants. When the spasms broke, she still felt an inkling of discomfort that would frequently and unexpectedly morph into repeat episodes of painful spasms.

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End Back Pain Forever: Chapter 1, Part 2 (#endbackpain)

Thursday, May 10th, 2012 at 10:00 am  

…and now, the second part of the first chapter of my upcoming book, End Back Pain Forever, to be released June 5, 2010.

Chapter 1

“Doctor, My Back is Killing Me!”, Part 2

“I can put you on strong medication to dull the pain,” says the doctor. “It may be that your spine is the problem.”

“Does that mean surgery?”

“It could. Surgeons do a million spinal operations a year.”

Surgery on your spine is the last thing you want to do, but your back pain is horrendous. And, of course, you want to get better. So you say, “Can’t we do an MRI or a CT scan to see if there’s anything wrong with the spine?” MRI, or Magnetic Resonance Imaging, is a picture generated by magnetic fields, while a CT (computed tomography) scan is a picture generated by X-rays.

When you are shown the test results, the doctor points out that the images of your spine show that you have, say, a herniated disc (in which the cushion between two bony vertebrae is either protruding or has ruptured) or spinal stenosis (narrowing of the spinal column that houses your spinal cord), or some other spinal anomaly–and that, apparently, is the cause of your pain.

But if it were true that the abnormality on the MRI or CT scan was indeed the cause of your pain, I wouldn’t have written this book–because almost no one has a “normal” MRI or CT scan of the lower spine, and what is read as abnormal is frequently not the cause of your pain.

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End Back Pain Forever (#endbackpain)

Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 at 10:00 am  

End Back Pain Forever will be published on June 5, 2102. I will be posting sections of the book beginning 5/8 and on every Tuesday and Thursday in May. This is how it begins:

 

Chapter 1

“Doctor, My Back is Killing Me!”

      You felt a twitch in your low back, then a heaviness and a sudden stab of pain.  It struck without warning — when you were crossing the street, stacking the dishwasher, jogging, whacking a golf ball, lifting a baby, swatting a fly, carrying groceries, bending over, getting out of a car, or just turning on a faucet.

Now you’re afraid to move. You’re locked in place. You feel a belt of pain pulsing across your back from hip to hip.  You wonder, what’s happening?  What did I do to get this?  You feel as though you’re cut in half as the pain seems to separate you from your legs.  Will the pain go away?  Will it stay?  Gingerly you start to move, but the pain only strikes harder.  No, it’s not going away, not at all.  And if — this is a big “if” — the pain does not ease off in a few days or go away in a couple of weeks, without proper treatment it is certain to return because your back is a target waiting to get hit again.

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