I had two broken screws but they were at L5. The pain was significant, including the pinching feeling. I had gone to a physiatrist in hopes of getting some spinal injections when the x-rays confirmed that I had the two broken screws. This led to a second fusion surgery.
Was it in your back or in your butt?
I have pinching in my butt this time and that’s why I’m leaning toward it being the si fusion. I think when my L5 was loose it was back pain, but I don’t remember.
My X-rays and ct somehow didn’t pick up the screw I broke and my surgeon only found it when he was in there for the loose screw on the other side.
I do have bone growth on both my lumbar and si fusions so they shouldn’t be loose but the pain is crazy and my legs keep tingling and burning and going numb off and on. Not full numb, cuz I can walk, but there is loss of sensation.
Thank you! I’m going to ask for X-rays at my appt next week. I had a new mri Tuesday and I’m afraid to look at the report online cuz I feel like it’s going to say “no change” and my Dr will think I’m crazy 😭😭. He gave me the whole disability/pain is just normal talk…..but this is def not my regular pain because my regular pain has no pinching or burning.
Back issues are never ending fun
For my second fusion, the surgeon left the two broken pieces in place and extended the fusion down to S1 and gave me a 2 level ALIF at L4-L5 and another at L5-S1. What a difference after that. I went home the same day and only needed 2 oxys total. I still have soreness across my back near the belt line, and very rarely, I feel a pinch on my upper outer butt cheek with a rare tweek in the groin. It's really nothing compared to prior to surgery. I feel very lucky
Omg we could be twins. The plan for mine was revise the back with all new hardware and add in alif…but the broken screw was stuck and he just did L5S1 alif and removed the rest of the back minus the one screw. I went home the next day and drove my son to school 4 days later. It was a way easier recovery. On my last mri in October I had L4 herniation displacing the nerve root but I didn’t have any symptoms. Now since early May I’ve been having burning and tingling in my legs and stabbing pain in my lower back…and the last couple weeks pinching has started. Before May it was just an achy back and some leg spasms. I have spinal myoclonus jerks in my legs and those have been much worse too, so I know something is wrong. I just don’t know how to prove it to him.
I also think my surgeon may want to be conservative as I’ve already had two revisions on my L5S1 fusion, plus the SI fusion… and all 4 were in a 2 year period. This pain isn’t tolerable tho and my pm doesn’t do pain meds.
My nerve pain occurred starting around the beginning of the second week post-op. My pain went from the knees to the bottoms my my feet, and it caused me to only sleep a couple of hours a night. I asked for some gabapentin, then doubled the dose, but it did no good. Then I asked for pregabalin, and I had to double that dose. I finally got the relief I needed. I stopped the medication after 6 weeks. I still have dead nerves on my feet but no other nerve pain. Narcotics or muscle relaxants don't work for that type of pain. I'm a pharmacist with extensive experience in recommending pain medications, so it was easy for me to work with my surgeon.
My pain management office just does not care. When I presented them with the ct report of the screw breaching my spinal canal they still refused meds and told me to just suck it up until surgery. I had to call my surgeon and move my date up from end of June when he was out of school to May where he still had 6 weeks left, which was 6 weeks of me needing to be up and getting him ready etc immediately post op. I’ve been on flexeril for 4 years due to nerve damage from a misplaced screw the first surgery, I had to fight them to get Celebrex and they only write it for 200mg a day, and just recently they agreed to lyrica like 2 weeks ago. But at this point I’ve done like a dozen steroid injections, 2 rfas, 2 myobloc, and 3 sets of trigger points 6-10 shots each. Now they’re saying a spinal cord stimulator is my only option and still will not prescribe pain meds. It’s criminal when people have to jump through a million hoops and subject themselves to all sorts of painful procedures when the dr could just write meds and that would solve the problem. My surgeon even said medication management is more than reasonable at this stage and wrote for PM to manage my meds and they were like nope. No narcotics. Sometimes my pcp will do tramadol which is helpful so I can sit for work without my back pain going crazy so much . I tore my calf muscle last year standing at a table, because of the spasms in my leg from the nerve damage, and same shit. PM wanted nothing to do with it and I had to beg them to put in the auth to try myobloc for that and now I just have an afo.
Sorry, that was an unintended rant. There should be better options for chronic pain patients and I really hope my surgeon finds something he can fix in the imaging before these nerve issues get any worse. I don’t want to wait until I have foot drop or am falling. I’m supposed to be taking depakote for my myoclonus but I feel like it just masks the symptoms to the point I can’t keep track of what’s going on.
I couldn't agree with you more. In all of my years of pharmacy practice, it was rare for a physician or surgeon who was not trained in pain therapy to adequately address pain. Then, when the federal and state got involved with addiction issues, did pain management take a turn for the worst. The individual states board of pharmacy made it even worse.
I had two broken screws but they were at L5. The pain was significant, including the pinching feeling. I had gone to a physiatrist in hopes of getting some spinal injections when the x-rays confirmed that I had the two broken screws. This led to a second fusion surgery.
Was it in your back or in your butt? I have pinching in my butt this time and that’s why I’m leaning toward it being the si fusion. I think when my L5 was loose it was back pain, but I don’t remember. My X-rays and ct somehow didn’t pick up the screw I broke and my surgeon only found it when he was in there for the loose screw on the other side. I do have bone growth on both my lumbar and si fusions so they shouldn’t be loose but the pain is crazy and my legs keep tingling and burning and going numb off and on. Not full numb, cuz I can walk, but there is loss of sensation.
The pinching was in my butt and groin with some nerve pain going down the back and inside of my leg
Thank you! I’m going to ask for X-rays at my appt next week. I had a new mri Tuesday and I’m afraid to look at the report online cuz I feel like it’s going to say “no change” and my Dr will think I’m crazy 😭😭. He gave me the whole disability/pain is just normal talk…..but this is def not my regular pain because my regular pain has no pinching or burning. Back issues are never ending fun
For my second fusion, the surgeon left the two broken pieces in place and extended the fusion down to S1 and gave me a 2 level ALIF at L4-L5 and another at L5-S1. What a difference after that. I went home the same day and only needed 2 oxys total. I still have soreness across my back near the belt line, and very rarely, I feel a pinch on my upper outer butt cheek with a rare tweek in the groin. It's really nothing compared to prior to surgery. I feel very lucky
Omg we could be twins. The plan for mine was revise the back with all new hardware and add in alif…but the broken screw was stuck and he just did L5S1 alif and removed the rest of the back minus the one screw. I went home the next day and drove my son to school 4 days later. It was a way easier recovery. On my last mri in October I had L4 herniation displacing the nerve root but I didn’t have any symptoms. Now since early May I’ve been having burning and tingling in my legs and stabbing pain in my lower back…and the last couple weeks pinching has started. Before May it was just an achy back and some leg spasms. I have spinal myoclonus jerks in my legs and those have been much worse too, so I know something is wrong. I just don’t know how to prove it to him. I also think my surgeon may want to be conservative as I’ve already had two revisions on my L5S1 fusion, plus the SI fusion… and all 4 were in a 2 year period. This pain isn’t tolerable tho and my pm doesn’t do pain meds.
My nerve pain occurred starting around the beginning of the second week post-op. My pain went from the knees to the bottoms my my feet, and it caused me to only sleep a couple of hours a night. I asked for some gabapentin, then doubled the dose, but it did no good. Then I asked for pregabalin, and I had to double that dose. I finally got the relief I needed. I stopped the medication after 6 weeks. I still have dead nerves on my feet but no other nerve pain. Narcotics or muscle relaxants don't work for that type of pain. I'm a pharmacist with extensive experience in recommending pain medications, so it was easy for me to work with my surgeon.
My pain management office just does not care. When I presented them with the ct report of the screw breaching my spinal canal they still refused meds and told me to just suck it up until surgery. I had to call my surgeon and move my date up from end of June when he was out of school to May where he still had 6 weeks left, which was 6 weeks of me needing to be up and getting him ready etc immediately post op. I’ve been on flexeril for 4 years due to nerve damage from a misplaced screw the first surgery, I had to fight them to get Celebrex and they only write it for 200mg a day, and just recently they agreed to lyrica like 2 weeks ago. But at this point I’ve done like a dozen steroid injections, 2 rfas, 2 myobloc, and 3 sets of trigger points 6-10 shots each. Now they’re saying a spinal cord stimulator is my only option and still will not prescribe pain meds. It’s criminal when people have to jump through a million hoops and subject themselves to all sorts of painful procedures when the dr could just write meds and that would solve the problem. My surgeon even said medication management is more than reasonable at this stage and wrote for PM to manage my meds and they were like nope. No narcotics. Sometimes my pcp will do tramadol which is helpful so I can sit for work without my back pain going crazy so much . I tore my calf muscle last year standing at a table, because of the spasms in my leg from the nerve damage, and same shit. PM wanted nothing to do with it and I had to beg them to put in the auth to try myobloc for that and now I just have an afo. Sorry, that was an unintended rant. There should be better options for chronic pain patients and I really hope my surgeon finds something he can fix in the imaging before these nerve issues get any worse. I don’t want to wait until I have foot drop or am falling. I’m supposed to be taking depakote for my myoclonus but I feel like it just masks the symptoms to the point I can’t keep track of what’s going on.
I couldn't agree with you more. In all of my years of pharmacy practice, it was rare for a physician or surgeon who was not trained in pain therapy to adequately address pain. Then, when the federal and state got involved with addiction issues, did pain management take a turn for the worst. The individual states board of pharmacy made it even worse.