[Debra]

Hi,

I'm new to the community, and after searching the forums haven't found anything comparable to my situation. Hoping this might engender some new discussion.

First, an introduction. I'm a 51 year old woman with a 30 year history of intermittent lower back pain, always alleviated quickly through exercise and massage, UNTIL 12 August. I bent down from my office chair to scoop a cable off the floor. As I brought my back up to vertical, I felt that very familiar lumbar discomfort. I initially thought, OK, I know how to deal with this, and began stretching. However, by the following day I could no longer sit without excruciating pain. Shortly thereafter, I couldn't do anything without intense pain. I began having disabling spasms that circled my pelvic girdle and radiated bilaterally to the knee. I saw my GP. His prescription was 2400+ mg of ibuprofen, soma, and hydrocodone. After 12 days of this I could no longer eat (although I wasn't exactly ravenous anyway) because my stomach was destroyed. Besides, nothing touched the pain, even when he upped the narcotic to oxycodone. In the interim I began seeing a chiropractor upon a friend's recommendation. Initial X-Ray summary: DDD at L2-3 w/ assoc. spondylosis and lower lumbar facet arthropathy; Mild scoliosis below L3. After two weeks of treatment with little relief other than the spasming becoming more localized, my chiropractor, to his credit, said, "I'm not helping you, there's something else going on and I think you should get an MRI."

I contacted a neurosurgeon I know superficially who has a good rep. (I live in Flagstaff, AZ -- you sort of know everybody after a while). He looks at the image the same day and schedules an office visit for me 3 days later, coming in early just to get me in! He suspected initially that I might be a candidate for fusion and discectomy, but when seeing me said that my palpable pain level did not match what he was seeing on the MRI. A CT-guided steroid injection stopped my leg pain, but didn't touch my back. Blood work showed a sed rate (ESR) of 100 and a high WBC. He puts me in the hospital. More imaging and a biopsy confirm osteomyelitis with the infectious agent staph aureus. A few more issues, e.g., stenosis, sacral bony demineralization, but everything is background to eliminating the staph.

Since release from the hospital I've been on 3x/day IV antibiotics. Four weeks down, two left to go! Two weeks ago an X-Ray showed that my vertebrae are self-fusing but are laterally offset. My NS said that shouldn't be too problematic for mobility, but I found the image pretty disconcerting. No guarantees about surgery down the road.

Sorry this is so long. If anyone out there has been down this road, I'd love to hear about you experience.

Thanks so much, Debra