@Jwh51 Yeah, just like I don’t get much pain relief, I also never get any “high” from pain pills. Maybe we’re lucky in that regard, because the potential for pain pill addiction is thus removed for us. It’s scary though, to think about how they’d treat our pain if we were run over by a truck or something. Maybe straight morphine would work. Hopefully!
I’ve been taking 1000mg of Aleve every 12 hours, for over a decade, for the pain of having no more disc material in my seven vertebrae from L1-S1. Those vertebrae are now self-fusing with a 17’ curve to the left (a.k.a. scoliosis). Sometimes I have to add Tylenol to the mix of kidney/liver toxicity. I’ve recently become anemic because the Aleve has created so many micro ulcers in my intestines, that I’m always slowly bleeding... somewhere. I never see any evidence of it. I’m taking iron but it’s not really helping. If/when I have to quit taking Aleve and have zero lumbar back pain relief, I don’t think I can tolerate living like that. I’ve tried. It’s not worth it.
It’s so insulting that the pharmaceutical companies and medical communities don’t give a crap about inventing a non-addictive chronic back pain solution. The plastic discs that can be inserted in the C-spine work just great - for the C-spine! But the plastic discs for the L-spine don’t work; they’re not complex enough. With modern technology, why can’t they invent an adequate L-spine disc replacement?! Or a pain medication that doesn’t ruin other parts of the body?
“Grin and bear it,” is basically the primary thing I hear from the medical community. Easy for those who don’t experience lumbar pain to say. They imagine it’s like having menstrual cramps, or a back muscle spasm, or even a broken leg (which I’ve had). But no, back BONE pain can’t just be ignored. It doesn’t go away with a trip to the ER or a visit to a chiropractor. It consumes your existence. It radiates everywhere. It alters the CORE of the body, unceasingly, and therefore alters the core of life. There’s no diaper for lumbar pain! Cymbalta only goes so far.
I’ve had a bunch of types of spine injections in several places in my spine. None of them helped at all; they just made the pain worse. The only upshot is that it’s better, more natural, for my spine to be self-fusing, than for me to have a rod inserted. My aunt had that done and it made her pain much worse. Accordingly, she was miserable and mean for most of her life. She quit functioning by age 65. Life isn’t worth living like that. I won’t do it.
Anyway. For now, fortunately, I can still take Aleve and Tylenol.
One more thing about pain meds - it’s so obnoxious that thanks to the over-hyped opioid hoopla, doctors don’t prescribe real pain meds any more. The vast majority of people who are/were prescribed opioids *don’t* become addicts. A few people really ruined it for the rest of us.
So what do doctors prescribe instead? Naproxen (a.k.a. Aleve)!!! Every 12 hours, for decades on end! NOT ONE DOCTOR WHO PRESCRIBED
ME ALEVE, ever warned me that I was ruining my intestines and therefore my blood and nutrient supply, by taking what they prescribe me: NSAIDs! So what’s actually worse, Aleve or Oxycodone? Statistically, consistently taking Aleve is actually far more of a certain path to early death than are stronger pain meds.
Pick your poison. Some days I feel like that’s all my life has added up to.
Sorry to stray onto the topic of back pain... that’s a topic for some other forum. But the origin of my L-spine problem is one and the same with the origin of my incontinence. I don’t recommend falling down a cliff.