Two weeks ago today, I picked up my back brace.
We’ve been thinking about getting me a back brace for some time now. Ever since I dislocated two ribs in March, really. After that happened, I had bought a soft posture corrector online. It seemed to help reduce my rib pain, and had the added bonus of keeping my posture a bit better. I’ve had back problems since I was 15, and shoulder problems since I was 17, and this seemed to be helping a little bit with both.
So my doctor decided that if the soft, kind of generic shaped posture corrector was helping, perhaps we should go in for something a little more structured. He sent me off to an orthotist, and the orthotist picked out a brace for me. It’s pretty new to the market, and part of what we all liked about it is that it’s a slim, light weight design. The California Eco brace seemed like a good answer for what I need – it provides support to both the lumbar and thoracic (that is, lower and mid-back, which covers most of my problem answers), and it helps pull the shoulders back and keep the spine aligned from the sacrum (the pelvis/hip bones) to the base of the neck. If you’re curious about it, you can see a good description and picture of it here – http://www.orthomerica.com/product/1606696-california-eco.
Now, I was supposed to pick this thing up MONTHS ago, no exaggeration. But we moved, and while I was still in physical therapy for the ribs and the back issues that came with them, I started my summer class. The summer class ended, and then my auto-immune thing flared wildly. I had bigger fish to fry than picking up a brace. Then fall classes were starting, and the auto-immune thing was still giving me problems, and my insomnia decided it needed to be a bigger part of my life. And frankly, if we’re being honest here, I procrastinated a bit about picking it up. I didn’t want to wear it. I didn’t want to be deciding whether I would deal with it making me all lumpy under my clothing or whether I’d wear it on the outside where it’d be visible. Anyhow, the stars and planets finally cooperated, and I was able to pick it up two weeks ago.
They told me to use the usual wearing-in schedule. For those of you not familiar with braces intended for long-term wear, this is how it works. You have to gently accustom your body to the new piece of equipment. So typically, you wear it for one hour on the first day you have it, and slowly increase the amount of time you wear it until you’re able to wear it for as long as you’re supposed to. I suppose ideally, I’d be working up to wearing it whenever I’m not in bed. Anyhow, the point here is that you start with one hour of wear typically. Being a somewhat cautious soul, I started by wearing it for 40 minutes.
It felt weird to have my posture altered like that, but not bad. It did feel good to take the brace off at the end of that 40 minutes, but anyone who wears braces will tell you that it pretty much always feels good to get the brace off at the end of the day, even when you’re completely adjusted and accustomed to it.
It was perhaps 6 hours later that problems started. I was watching TV and relaxing, and suddenly there is a horizontal bar of pain about an inch wide slicing across a space slightly broader than my spine. There were only a few minutes left to the show, so I figure I’ll just watch to the end and then go and lie down. The pain starts spreading, first the bar extending horizontally, and then increasing vertically. It traced down my spine and up my spine. My head began hurting terribly. And then it started affecting other things – my abdomen hurt so badly that I started retching. I went and lie down in bed, and the pain was bad enough that I was making noise and woke my fiance. I ended up throwing up, and it took me a while to figure out that I wasn’t having a tension-induced migraine (which was how I initially interpreted the combination of headache and nausea/vomiting). I got out my tennis ball and started working on the muscles right around where the pain started. It took me a good long while, but I finally got the worst of the pain to abate.
I spent the next week using heat, the tennis ball ‘massage’, and stretching to try to get the whole thing under control. I was doing not too badly by the weekend, but come Monday it got worse. So Tuesday, I got in to see the same day clinic at my doctor’s office. He’s impossible to get a same day appointment with, but the doctor I saw was quite pleasant. She gave me 2 weeks’ worth of muscle relaxants, and perhaps more importantly, a prescription for physical therapy.
I bumbled through a week of feeling truly dreadful, and then today was finally able to see my physical therapist. He does think that the brace is a reasonable choice, but we need to do some work on my back before my back is ready for it. And I need a much slower wear-in schedule, starting with no more than half the time I originally attempted. Shoot, I think I’ll probably just do 10 minutes to start! Anyhow, he did a lot of mobilization on my spine today, because that was a big part of the continuing problem – the muscles that support the vertebrae had locked up so badly that nothing could move. It was definitely not the most pleasant physical therapy session I’ve ever had, and my back is very tender now, but I am hopeful that this will help. The physical therapist also believes that in the long run, the brace will likely be good for me. It’s just getting to the point where I can tolerate it that’s the trouble.
In other news – I got my results for my blood work. It’s not going to be helpful in diagnosing me. All of the tests to pinpoint more specifically what kind of auto-immune condition we’re dealing with came back in normal ranges. Whatever I have, I apparently have the sero-negative version. While that’s not unheard of, it is a bit unusual. I suppose given how often I have the unusual version of conditions, I shouldn’t be surprised! I see the rheumatologist a week from tomorrow to see what he has to say on the matter. I hope that he’s able to put me on something that isn’t the prednisone I’ve now been on for almost two months. It has my insomnia acting up, and I have terrible heat flashes (to the point where I’ve been keeping the house about 4 degrees cooler than I usually tolerate, which is 6 degrees cooler than I normally like), and a couple weeks ago, I chewed out the fiance so badly over something utterly inconsequential that he was afraid to come home from work. Oh, and I’m sweating buckets, and I’d like to eat the whole world. Quite the unpleasant little drug. Necessary, but unpleasant. I’m worried that my doctor will want to keep me on it. If that’s the case, they’re probably going to need to increase my dose again, because the hand, foot, knee, and back pain is all coming back, and my hands are visibly swollen again. this is all getting old, body! I’m fed up with being swollen up. I just want you to go back to playing nice and not beating yourself up.
Brilliant Mind Broken Body 