01 Oct ‘Back’ your low back without surgery – Story of Girish
For all those who want a healthy back without surgery- Read on the story. Girish was a typical office goer few years back. Only work and no self care was the norm. This eventually lead to a typical white collared problem of severe back pain disturbing his personal life and affecting work.
Repeated episodes of back pain kept happening until he sought help after a particularly simple bending movement caused a severely locked back. An MRI revealed a severely worn out cushion in his lower back (called disc) which was precariously close to his spinal nerve.
This is the typical example of many amongst us! We all use our backs or necks without ever servicing them adequately.
Repeated back pain episodes were frustrating for Girish. Many a times we came close enough to think of the final solution of a surgery or the intermediate option of a injection in the back to relieve the pain.
In cases like these we doctors are ready to play the waiting game (treating without surgery) provided the patient understands the problem and is willing to walk that extra mile with us, both mentally and physically. The natural history of disc disease is generally of getting better but always recurring if not taken appropriate care. In Girish we found a motivated soul who understood his body and had the will. It wasn’t a smooth ride though. The initial days were trying and we either used to meet once in 2-3 months in clinic, sometimes a hurried home visit to mend his locked back. He used to miss office, not to mention the mental frustration. Every-time the pain increased, the advice from our side was to stop his rehabilitation, take complete bed rest for 2-4 days and restart activities and rehab once the pain was better. Girish literally took the bull by the horns and followed the advice and rehab diligently. Patience, understanding the issue and will from both involved sides(doctors and patient) along with appropriate core muscle training usually does achieve the goal. The aim of the treatment is to diminish the frequency of the back pain episodes by doing weight reduction, appropriate guidance on the rehab and changing the way we work( basically less sitting).
Will matters!!
In his own words “It is two steps forward and one step backward”
Girish slowly but surely started to improve, started enjoying his cricket and even introduced cycling in his routine. The back pain attacks diminished in frequency as his overall fitness improved and so did his office visits with us. The summit of this overall improvement was that he completed the Mumbai half marathon 2015 (21 kilometres of run) within 150 minutes!!!!! A stupendous achievement of which we are all immensely proud.
Well done Girish- a sweet personal victory, achieved through understanding, some support from us and a strong mindful application by you.
Your story is inspiring to many more like you. It needs to be told. Hence the exercise.
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