For many years I suffered from back and muscle pain. In the beginning, there were symptoms everywhere. Depending on the day, it could be in my shoulders, my neck, upper and lower back, stiffness in the legs and feet, pressure on my legs and hips that could become so severe it felt as though a hundred-pound weight was resting on my shoulders. I would pray for it to go away until it did go away, only to return a few months later.
Over time things got worse and almost every day there came a new adventure in discomfort and pain, not just in my back but all over different parts of the body. I went through a whole battery of tests but the doctors couldn’t find anything. After looking at one of the MRIs of my neck a spinal surgeon told me that he couldn’t see anything significant. He tried to convince me it was all in my head and referred me to a psychiatrist.
Things went from bad to worse rising to the point where I was having difficulty just getting through the day. It was painful to walk, drive, stand in one place. I developed insomnia. I started taking pain pills to mask the symptoms. Eventually, they turned on me and exacerbated the symptoms.
I made the classic mistake of going on the Internet to play doctor, and diagnose what I had. It’s always a bad idea for a layman to start playing doctor. For a while, I was convinced I had the onset of Parkinson’s Disease. (My mother had it so I must have it as well.) After not being satisfied with that diagnosis I began gathering what I thought was enough medical evidence to convince myself I had MS. This research was beginning to drive me insane.
Before I checked into an insane asylum I had MRI done on my entire spine. When the results came back a glimmer of light came shining through the darkness. There was significant stenosis and bulging discs found in my lower back. I consulted with a surgeon who said he could fix the problem with a minimally invasive procedure. That procedure landed me in a hospital bed for three days. Minimally invasive my ass.
Things seemed to be getting better for a few months until all the old symptoms started coming back. It was worse than before, to the point where I could barely walk. After a year I went to another surgeon and this doctor did the right procedure. Over six hours under anesthesia as he replaced the three bulging discs and fused three areas at the lumbar area of my spine.
Recovery has been tough but I am recovering. Let me take a breath after all this digression and we’ll get to the point.
Okay, I’m back. A couple of months after the second surgery I was still struggling with walking. Old symptoms began to reappear. I feared that I might be facing another failed surgery. No, please God no. One morning not so long ago I was trolling the Internet. I found a forum with people who were dealing with back problems like myself. One woman described a procedure that was similar to mine, and it took her a year to get back to walking straight and living a normal life.
The most important thing she said for my purposes was the thing that saved her was the right pair of shoes. A friend told her about a store that sold sneakers for all sorts of orthopedic needs. They had a high-tech computer hooked up to a treadmill that mapped out your walking pattern and suggested what type of shoe you should be wearing. There was a rubber pad that you stood on that heat measured the width of your foot exactly.
So, I found a store near my home that had all this stuff and they fitted me with a pair of sneakers and insoles that changed my ease of walking about fifty percent. It was almost too good to be true. I kept thinking this was another one of my psychosomatic dramas, and I feared my walking would go back to where it was in a day or so. But, that didn’t happen. After a couple of weeks, the sneakers still worked and my stride continues to improve and get stronger. After shelling out thousands of dollars to specialists and hospitals, nobody ever mentioned the shoes. I keep asking myself why. They have to know. Is it a dark conspiracy among orthopedic specialists and the like not to tell you about wearing the proper shoes, or is that just not their job? I don’t really know. How do you fail to tell a patient to do something that is so easily done yet so important? I’ll have to ponder the question more. Meanwhile, with my back problem, it was all about the shoes.
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