Since around the first of this year (2015), back pain crept into my life for the first time. In the beginning, I had to stand quite awhile or walk quite a distance for the back pain to start up, but over the months the distance has gotten smaller and the time standing less and less before the muscles in my back are cramped so bad I have to sit down so they’ll relax.
The past 10 months leading up to having to go to the doctor for back pain…
Around August it started getting really bad, to the point where there was one day on holiday in the UK where my husband and I were in a little seaside town sight seeing and I swear the only thing I cared about was where the next bench was. I was in absolute agony.
The weird thing about that trip was it was largely a trip where we were going on cycling routes and riding around 30+ kilometers a day. My back was just fine. And, all this time I’ve been lifting weights at the gym (squats, straight legged deadlifts, bent over rows, etc) without much issue. It was JUST the bloody walking.
Anyways, last month it was already getting to be way too much and I thought that maybe I went too long before getting new inlays, especially since I have more fat on my inner thighs since I last got inlays and now. I know that the inner thigh fat is making me walk more on the outside of my feet making me “waddle” more than walk. So I went to the podiatrist to see what she could do for me. She drastically changed the inlay, but informed me that she’s at the end of what she can do for me.
I got new shoes at the beginning of this month (October 2015) and got my new inlays about 2 weeks ago. They are drastically different and my knees really started hurting to the point I haven’t been able to do squats at the gym. And my back REALLY started hurting. I thought that this is merely because the inlays are making me walk differently which really does affect everything from the feet up.
However, about a half a week ago the knee pain has gone but the back pain only increased. This past Saturday, my personal trainer increased my straight legged deadlift weight from 40kg to 50kg since the 3 reps of 15 weren’t fatiguing my glutes any longer. Well, the 50kg did what it was supposed to do plus it irritated the hell out of my back.
Yesterday (Sunday) my husband and I went to buy a new vacuum cleaner in the city center and had to park several parking garages from where we wanted to go because of some event going on in the center. Normally this would be fine, however, the half a kilometer walk to the store almost had me on my knees and once we got upstairs to where the vacuums were, I was in tears. Luckily, sitting down for a minute or two makes the muscles relax a bit so I was able to find a chair, relax, and then get on with the tedious decision of what vacuum to buy (if you’re curious, it ended up being an anti-allergy Dyson).
This was kind of a wake up call that I finally needed to go see the doctor about the muscle cramping…
So, this morning I called up the huisart (it’s kind of a GP or family doctor in the Netherlands) for my whopping 5 minute visit (not kidding). However, because this was a spur of the moment call, I wasn’t able to get into see my own doctor who knows me and my situation with Lipedema. I get to see a substitute doctor.
Since as many 5 minute appointments are crammed into a doctor’s day as possible, they don’t really get to read up on their next patient. Needless to say, the substitute doctor didn’t read up on me or the Lipedema. After I got done explaining my back situation, the first thing out of his mouth was, “You need to lose weight.”
Sigh.
Yes.
I know.
And guess what?
I would if I fucking could.
Knowing that he hadn’t read up on me, I patiently attempted to educate him about Lipedema. His response? “That’s what we call obesity in the medical field.”
Deep breaths.
My husband starts explaining Lipedema to the doctor in dutch, just in case it was miscommunication due to language. This is why I normally drag my husband along to medical appointments. I can order cheese or discuss the weather in dutch, my medical dutch isn’t so great and I really don’t want misunderstandings. Especially now.
As the doctor realizes this is true (he’s actually reading my file on his computer at this point), he admits he’s never heard of this and says he’s going to have to look it up. If he does, then at least the next women he sees that might have Lipedema will be spared the “lose weight” speech.
The end result is some pretty good drugs and not having to stop training with my PT…
Since he’s not my actual doctor, he didn’t want to diagnose my back pain. He said that he could clearly see that this is a complicated situation that already has plenty going on with my weight, exercise, MLD, and looking into liposuction. So we’re going for pain management. Honestly, at this point, I’m good with that because I’m pretty much done with the pain.
I’ve been prescribed a pretty high dose of paracetamol (i.e. pretty much Tylenol), some diclofenac which is an anti-inflammatory like ibuprofen but a little better on pain killing and does less damage to your stomach if you have to take it for an extended period, and tramadol which is an opiate pain killer which also has the side effect of muscle relaxing.
Best of all he said I can keep working out with my personal trainer. So I won’t lose any progress there, and my trainer is pretty good about working with whatever my body throws at me on any given day.
Hopefully with all this I can get a little relief, but my suspicions is I really need to get this fat from my inner thighs taken off me before things really start to heal. But, we’ll see in 2 weeks what the surgeon at the clinic that I’m looking into says about that.
PetraAnn
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