digenerative disk disease/osteo arthritis

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Every thing I've read about digenerative disk disease explains what it is, but it seems when they discribe the pain it should be taken care of with therapy exercise and mild pain medication. My pain is way more severe than this. Some days I cant get out of bed with out help and many, many times I have litteraly crawled on my hands and knees because the pain is so bad I cant stand up and if I bend over I get stuck and cant get in the upright position for several days. I take 60mg. of methadone 3x a day. and some times it just doesn't help. Is this normal? Or is there some thing
much worse going on? I've had several MRI's and didn't show any thing else. Can this disease cause this severe of pain?

simone · Gold Member Joined: 23 Jul 2005 Posts: 478

It sure can. My father has also suffered from DDD. There were periods when he had to sleep on the ground because the pain was so severe and he couldn’t move. Then his friends would come over and literally take him to acupuncturists. Believe it or not, after just a few sessions of acupuncture he would be back on his feet, after just 10 session, it would be as if nothing had happened.

But it used to happen almost every year when I was a kid just before we were supposed to go to the sea-side. My father doesn’t have any more such severe problems with his back. He was an active sportsman for years.

However, my uncle got no relief from either drugs or physical therapy or anything. I don’t think he tried acupuncture. His pain was so severe that the only thing he was thinking about was surgery. Spinal fusion. Some doctors didn’t want to do it but he insisted on it because noting else helped his severe pain. It was as severe as you’re describing.

Have you discussed with any of the doctors the possibility of fusion? It may be just right for you with so much pain.
Everything went well with my uncle’s operation. He had to use walking sticks and walking wheels at first and then he went to a spa for rehabilitation and when he came back everything was great. He swears by the operation and says it was the smartest thing he had done.

Methadone has a potency to addiction, so be careful with it. It actually causes tolerance first, so you need more and more to get the same effect and then there’s a big chance of addiction.
Try acupuncture if you haven’t already but then you may find an experienced neurosurgeon and discuss things with him/her about your options.

digenerative disk disease/osteo arthritis

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