Quote:
Originally Posted by XYZ
As I said in post #5:
I had been prescribed muscle relaxants years ago and also found they didn't do much for pain. Ibuprofen, especially in larger doses (Motrin) works very well for pain as it is also an anti-inflammatory. But who wants to be dependent on pain pills interminably?
Doing daily corrective exercises is a time consuming chore and I'll be doing them daily until I die. But for me, being pain free is worth spending that half hour every morning.
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I spent several months both going to physical therapy and doing the exercises at home. They always increased my pain, sometimes to the point of barely being able to drive home afterward. Over the years I've tried doing the exercises at home several times and they still have the same effect. I agree 30 minutes or even an hour a day would be a small price to pay to be pain free, but in my case apparently it's not meant to be. Since physical therapy didn't work the Dr.'s have told me it's either live with the pain or take narcotic pain killers. They say there's nothing they can do surgically to help relieve the pain. I tried for a few years to live without narcotics, but my quality of life (spending days at a time in the bed, because it hurt to bad to sit up) had deteriorated to the point of considering suicide, so I gave into using Fentynal patches and used them until they weren't doing much good controlling the pain, then went on Morphine. Before I came off the patches which are supposed to last 3 days I was prescribed a new patch per day and that still wasn't doing the job. The Morphine does more good than the patches ever did. With the patches I had bad muscle twitches and would knock things off the nightstand and hit and kick my wife at night. Ibuprofen doesn't do much good for my pain, but Naproxen helps when the morphine and muscle relaxers won't do it alone or at times when I have to drive and don't want to take the muscle relaxers. Even with Morphine I'm nowhere near pain free. The Dr. I used to see at the pain clinic I went to in NC asked me if I wanted to go on Oxycontin, but I told him I didn't want it unless it was a last resort. My pain level is still usually in the 5-6 range, but it's much better than the 8-10 without the pain killers.