A Not-So-Brief Medical Background

Before age 20, I was healthy – okay, I was fat, but not in pain because of it. I was living in an apartment by myself. One day, I was taking a shower, and I fell out of the shower backwards. My left side hit the toilet, my right side hit the floor, and my legs we dangling over the lip of the tub. About six months later, when I moved out of the apartment, my sides were hurting pretty badly. The apartment was upstairs, too 😦

Anyway, I go back home, and things slowly start getting worse. I think that I was exercising less because I wasn’t running around a campus all of the time. My right leg had a numb spot running down the back where the IT band is, and it was always warmer than the rest of my leg. Then, my back started getting stiff, and I had shooting pains down the back of my right leg. I didn’t go to the doctor because I couldn’t afford it, and I’d rather suffer than spend 12+ hours waiting in the free hospital. By the time I get to California in 2009, things calm down a little. Then, it got worse than ever. I couldn’t sit, stand, walk, bend over, or lay down without being in constant pain. I went to a women’s health clinic November 2009, and told the NP about my back and leg pain. She sends me to get an x-ray of my lower back only.

The results come back, and I am told I have multi-level degenerative disc disease, or spondylosis. Basically, it’s arthritis in my lower spine. Moderate to severe cases of rheumatoid arthritis run in my family, but mostly in the hands and knees.

Most people acquire spondylosis between age 30-50. I was 22.

The NP just gave me painkillers like Vicodin, which did not work at all. I just felt weird. I kept telling her I don’t think it’s the muscle that’s causing shooting pains, I think it’s the nerves. I guess she didn’t believe me or something, so I stopped going to her. Also, she NEVER told me that it could be helped if I lost weight; I knew that already, but I thought it strange that a primary care specialist concerned about overall health wouldn’t mention it at all.

In April 2010, the pain was so unbearable, I wanted to die. I couldn’t do anything for myself. Just taking a shower made me extremely tired. The effort of holding myself up while standing made me sweat with effort. I knew that I had to try something, so I found the best chiropractic office ever! The office manager who made my appointment said that I sounded like I was in so much pain, she had to get me in there the next day. So there I was. Sitting in the chair, I could hardly concentrate on filling out the forms, the pain was so bad. I got them filled out, and the doctor’s technician put me on this machine that stimulates muscles. It felt really weird, but after it was done I felt a bit better.

Then, I met my chiropractor. The first thing he did was take an x-ray of my WHOLE back AND my hip area. He asked me to go sit in his office so he could get the film and talk to me about it. He said that I do have spondylosis, but I also have scoliosis AND a leg length discrepancy! He said that he figured that I had scoliosis because he saw that it took so much effort to stand straight, and even when I did, I was still leaning to the left side. The giveaway for the short leg issue was that I couldn’t stand with both feet on the ground. My left foot is always on tiptoe, like I’m wearing a high heel on only one foot. While we were sitting in the office, he looked at my legs – fully clothed – and said that it was obvious when I was sitting down as well. I’d actually thought for some time that I had a short leg because my best friend pointed out that one day that I limped…I had absolutely no idea, but after she told me, I began to notice it.

He also told me that everything would stop causing me so many problems if I lost weight! My leg length discrepancy was causing a chain reaction in my body:

1. Because my left leg was too short, my left side muscles were overcompensating by becoming short and weak, which caused the scoliotic bend to the left.

2. The constant fight between my left and right side to keep me upright meant that the vertebrae in my lower back were essentially grinding against each other, causing the shooting pain down my legs (every time I sat and stood, I consciously shifted my lower back to realign it).

3. My right side had to work twice as hard to hold me upright because it was the “correct” side, which caused inflammation in my IT band and stiffness in that side.

Also, scoliosis and leg length discrepancy are based on genetics, spondylosis is not (thanks, parents!).

The cure: There isn’t one, but a heel lift and being less fat would definitely help – and it has!