back issues ... is it possible ...

teteri66

Hello! How are you doing?

In a word, yes. My husband ruptured the disc at L5-S1 about twenty years ago. Back then, they weren't so quick to operate, nor did they insist one have an epidural steroid injection. As long as he wasn't planning a trip to a foreign country, they told him to go to PT and that it would heal. It did. It took about six months.

To this day, he still does the exercises that he learned in PT...faithfully, every morning. He is careful to not abuse his back...but he still runs five days a week and does a lot of things around the house that I can no longer do comfortably after my three lumbar surgeries!

Particularly with a disc issue, statistics after 2 years show that people who had surgery and those that did not are basically in the same boat...the same percentage reports no longer having symptoms/pain.

A disc can heal on its own. Once inflammation goes down, pain usually subsides.

MSNik

The pain can definately go away whether or not its repaired or not....backs do not usually heal themselves. If your husband has done allot of PT, he may have pushed it back into the right place where it is no longer buldging...but it may or may not be temporary.

You do NOT have to have surgery for a buldging/ herniated disc UNLESS it is causing dire pain and affects walking/ sitting/ sleeping to the point where surgery is unavoidable.

I have had a herniated C4, C5, C6 for more than 20 years. I refuse surgery and to be honest, the pain comes and goes...when I walk for hours or do anything crazy like too many situps (its the neck area), Ill feel the pain for a few days, but eventually it goes away again or at least becomes tolerable where I can live with it.

Hope that helps.
MSNik

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RRMS- dx 05