It was towards the end of 2014 that I started getting some pretty horrible back pain. However, it was weird back pain. When I stood or walked, I’d start getting some wicked cramping in my glutes, hips and IT band. When I sat, the tension and cramping died down. I couldn’t walk 100 meters from the car to the front of the grocery store without pain, but I could cycle 30km without any problem.
I thought about the time I was diagnosed in fall 2015 the cause was for sure the fat between my legs forcing me to walk on the sides of my feet.
Around January 2016 I started having sports massage done on my lower back and hips to help loosen them up and control the pain. This helped a bit, although it was painful on the lipedema fat and left giant, deep, dark bruises.
In spring 2016, before I started my first thigh liposuction, I switched from massage to dry needling. This actually helped A LOT and the pain became tolerable with regular treatment.
Between December 2016 and the present, I really didn’t need dry needling. It really hasn’t been until last month (May 2017) that the pain has become intolerable but it’s also been increasing.
Absolutely nothing I could find, from the internet or doctors, clued me into what was wrong. I was focused on strengthening my core and lower back, stretching all the muscles that usually give me wicked muscle cramps, foam rolling all the time, and trying to walk a lot. Most back pain is because of sitting too much, too little stretching and weak muscles so this should all help. Plus, the pain being relieved by sitting was just odd. It should feel better standing or walking!
That is until last week I came across something on the internet when I once again tried googling my symptoms.
Lumbar Spinal Stenosis
What is Lumbar Spinal Stenosis? It’s the narrowing of the spinal canal in the lumbar region. These are the symptoms:
- Developing slowly over time, slow onset
- Coming and going as opposed to continuous pain
- Occurring during certain activities such as walking or standing upright
- Feeling relieved by rest, sitting or lying down, or any flexed forward position
Check, check, check and check. In fact, upon looking at a few different sites explaining Lumbar Stenosis, some of them talk about how some people that have it can walk long distances leaning on something like a shopping cart or in my case, hiking sticks. Also, walking up inclines (or 80% grade mountains) don’t bother it. However, standing up will.
With this information, it makes complete sense that the pain is getting worse. In Feb and March, I was still walking bent forward because my stomach was still heavy from the swelling of liposuction. However, it has really started to go down in May so I can walk with good posture now. That good posture is probably narrowing the canal the nerve runs through and compressing it, causing pain.
So Today I Visited My GP to start the process of figuring out if this is really what I have. She checked for hernias and she’s pretty sure that isn’t it (and of course my fysios have confirmed repeatedly I don’t have any herniated disks). The more we talked, the more she started agreeing that it has to be Lumbar Spinal Stenosis because exercise, massage, stretching, walking, etc should be helping my back and sitting too much hurting it. Meanwhile it’s walking/standing hurting and I can sit for eternity without my back hurting.
The First Step Was an XRay of my back this afternoon. In 2 weeks I’ll talk to the doctor and see if she sees anything (unfortunately, she’s away next week but this isn’t a life or death situation). If she does, then she’ll know what specialist to send me to. A neurosurgeon or orthopedic surgeon. If she can’t see anything from the XRay, she’ll send me to the neurosurgeon since it obviously has to do with a compressed nerve. From there it’ll probably be an MRI and then either a referral to the orthopedist or treatment of whatever is found.
The good thing is lumbar spinal stenosis isn’t lethal. I have no chance of becoming paralyzed (if spinal stenosis happens in the neck, it can actually cause paralysis). In fact, this happens to a lot of people 55 and older. So I have time to figure out if there’s a way to control the pain or if it will end up being more surgery.
We’ll see! I certainly didn’t expect to fix one problem (lipedema) only to be immediately faced with this new problem!
PetraAnn
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