MRI Lower Back Pain Herniated Disc and Running
Summary: If you are an avid runner you know that occasional pain is just a part of the activity It comes in different intensities and it affects different parts of the body Sometimes it s in the knee other times it s in the foot sometimes it s from a strained muscle and other times it s in a joint Take a look at my recent MRI and it s not hard to tell where my pain was coming from Even my kids had no trouble spotting it Mind you my doctor is yet to see this on my next visit but odds are he ll zero in on this anomaly too The ordeal started about 4 months ago At first it was a pulling and tightening sensation in my left hamstring As time progressed it became painful specially on long jogs and the hilly parts of my route I would just attribute it to a strained muscle yet strangely the hamstring was not tender to the touch The discomfort would eventually subside but kept returning with more intensity after each run In my mind something was clearly wrong but not bad enough to seek medical help Then 2 months later my body decided to send a stronger signal in the form of a nasty lower back pain I ve had lower back pain before They would normally hit me every couple of years and eventually go away after about a week I would just ignore them and continue with my daily activities including running But this time the pain had no intention of leaving In fact it kept worsening to a point that I could barely even walk The hamstring pain was still there but I was yet to connect the dots My orthopedic doctor however did make the connection when I finally decided to pay him a visit An X ray revealed no serious problems so I was given some conditioning exercises some anti inflammatory medication and a follow up date Slowly the pain began to subside and I started to resume my normal life and running But a couple of weeks later just before leaving for a week long business trip the pain returned with a vengeance This was the worse trip I had every been on There I was in Miami Beach near the beach where I should have been running after work Instead I was nursing a debilitating pain I couldn t sit I couldn t stand I could barely walk and I still had my job to do Things became even worse when I returned Getting in and out of the car became a long exercise in pain Turning in bed at night meant a certain wake up with a piercing pain Advil became a candy of choice in copious amounts Finally I called my doctor again to see him before the follow up date He discovered a distinct weakness in my left leg as compared to the right one I believe this condition is known to some as Sciatica He suspected a herniated disc and ordered an MRI scan which took place yesterday The Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine is truly a marvel of medical technology It can virtually slice through the body and record images from multiple angles while the patient feels absolutely nothing except his original pain that brought him there in the first place Claustrophobics would certainly find the process disconcerting as do people like me who can t hold still for even a minute When I had to lie still in that loud coffin like contraption for some 40 minutes the desire to move became even more magnified I don t know how I lasted that long but somehow I managed to stay still the whole time Moving around probably would have meant having to stay longer in there for re scans and my goal was to escape the mechanical beast as fast as possible At the end of the session I was given a CD ROM to hand over to my doctor on my next visit I hadn t intended to browse the CD but by the time I got home curiosity both technical and medical got the better of me and I started to browse the images Many of them made no sense to my untrained eyes I could almost make out the position of the sliced images but they all looked like a mass of chopped meat to me until I got to the length wise sliced images As I looked closer I finally spotted the damming evidence which I have indicated above with a white arrow on the image Yes that s really my spine I m no doctor although I am a son of a darn good pediatrician but this looks like an unmistakable culprit to me It may be a herniated or bulging or protruded or slipped or ruptured disc but it s easy to see how it s pinching the nerve between the L5 and S1 vertebrae Ok I googled their names If you are an avid runner you know that occasional pain is just a part of the activity It comes in different intensities and it affects different parts of the body Sometimes it s in the knee other times it s in the foot sometimes it s from a strained muscle and other times it s in a joint Take a look at my recent MRI and it s not hard to tell where my pain was coming from Even my kids had no trouble spotting it Mind you my doctor is yet to see this on my next visit but odds are he ll zero in on this anomaly too The ordeal started about 4 months ago At first it was a pulling and tightening sensation in my left hamstring As time progressed it became painful specially on long jogs and the hilly parts of my route I would just attribute it to a strained muscle yet strangely the hamstring was not tender to the touch The discomfort would eventually subside but kept returning with more intensity after each run In my mind something was clearly wrong but not bad enough to seek medical help Then 2 months later my body decided to send a stronger signal in the form of a nasty lower back pain I ve had lower back pain before They would normally hit me every couple of years and eventually go away after about a week I would just ignore them and continue with my daily activities including running But this time the pain had no intention of leaving In fact it kept worsening to a point that I could barely even walk The hamstring pain was still there but I was yet to connect the dots My orthopedic doctor however did make the connection when I finally decided to pay him a visit An X ray revealed no serious problems so I was given some conditioning exercises some anti inflammatory medication and a follow up date Slowly the pain began to subside and I started to resume my normal life and running But a couple of weeks later just before leaving for a week long business trip the pain returned with a vengeance This was the worse trip I had every been on There I was in Miami Beach near the beach where I should have been running after work Instead I was nursing a debilitating pain I couldn t sit I couldn t stand I could barely walk and I still had my job to do Things became even worse when I returned Getting in and out of the car became a long exercise in pain Turning in bed at night meant a certain wake up with a piercing pain Advil became a candy of choice in copious amounts Finally I called my doctor again to see him before the follow up date He discovered a distinct weakness in my left leg as compared to the right one I believe this condition is known to some as Sciatica He suspected a herniated disc and ordered an MRI scan which took place yesterday The Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine is truly a marvel of medical technology It can virtually slice through the body and record images from multiple angles while the patient feels absolutely nothing except his original pain that brought him there in the first place Claustrophobics would certainly find the process disconcerting as do people like me who can t hold still for even a minute When I had to lie still in that loud coffin like contraption for some 40 minutes the desire to move became even more magnified I don t know how I lasted that long but somehow I managed to stay still the whole time Moving around probably would have meant having to stay longer in there for re scans and my goal was to escape the mechanical beast as fast as possible At the end of the session I was given a CD ROM to hand over to my doctor on my next visit I hadn t intended to browse the CD but by the time I got home curiosity both technical and medical got the better of me and I started to browse the images Many of them made no sense to my untrained eyes I could almost make out the position of the sliced images but they all looked like a mass of chopped meat to me until I got to the length wise sliced images As I looked closer I finally spotted the damming evidence which I have indicated above with a white arrow on the image Yes that s really my spine I m no doctor although I am a son of a darn good pediatrician but this looks like an unmistakable culprit to me It may be a herniated or bulging or protruded or slipped or ruptured disc but it s easy to see how it s pinching the nerve between the L5 and S1 vertebrae Ok I googled their names
Image Dimensions: 250 x 433
Image originally found here.
