My doctor and neurologist both discuss my condition with me as secondary osteoarthritis, and chronic pain I have been living with since March 2007…but yet all my health claims state lumbar sprain and strain. I have pain and stiffness if I am imobile for more than one hour, cannot stand for long periods of time without severe and sharp pains, have shooting pains and tingling in my hips, buttocks and thighs. I had a previous injury in college in which I was told I bruised my sciatic nerve, and had periods of the loss of feeling from the waist down (almost like being plunged into ice cold water) and was unable to stand…these episodes would last up to a few hours at times and occurred for almost 6 months. I have been on opoids after failed trials of NSAIDS for over a year now, once the x-ray confirmed “degenerative disc disease.” The pain management clinic tells me I’ll be lucky if the opoids handle 20% of my pain, but then state I do not have a debilitative condition. ?? My MRI and x-ray both indicate arthritis. I went through 8 months of physical therapy for my back and neck, only to be sent back a second time for my hands (with 24/7 splints) and also for my neck (in my appointment today). I tested negative for rhuematoid arthritis. I have had multiple problems with dizziness, nausea, headaches (migraines), numbness, pain in the arm and chest, problems hearing (and was recently diagnosed with neurological hearing damage), fatigue, insomnia, depression, muscle spasms in the neck/back/buttocks, and memory loss over this past year. During the time I took NSAIDs my blood pressure was extremely high. Is there a difference between these terms? Or are all these terms related to the same condition? Are the doctors downplaying my pain treatment, or under treating me for pain? Are the doctors missing something here?
I’m only 36 years old and can find virtually nothing online that can help me with this, secondary osteoarthritis.
#1 by mistify on February 15, 2010 - 10:30 pm
It’s somewhat a matter of semantics. Lumbar arthritis is not necessarily one of those categories for which it necessarily demonstrates is related to one’s pain. Therefore, you may see a variety of “diagnoses” which all relate to the same condition. Let’s put it this way, under the current classification system adopted by most physicians under the European Guidelines (widely adopted in the US), back pain is either classified as: medical (such as a tumor, rheumatoid arthritis), nerve root pathology (signs of direct nerve compression with significant weakness and loss of reflexes) or “non-specific” low back pain. Unfortunately, this includes about 85% of people. In otherwords, these folks never really get a productive “label” for their back pain…just that it’s “non-specific”. Rather, they wind up with terms like “lumbar strain”, “lumbago”, degenerative disc disease, etc. These terms are unproductive because they do not really tell one how to best treat you. Functional and pain catergorization is often more beneficial: such as “reducible derrangement”, “central sensitization”, etc. These are labels that actually help guide clinicians in your treatment…unfortunately, they are not really adopted by most physicians…most PTs, physiatrists and some pain docs.
In the end, yes your lumbar strain is the same issue at hand…but you and I both know that a strain doesn’t last that long and its quite an unproductive label in your case.