Quote:
Originally Posted by Seahawk
I would try everything, including bed supports for the back, braces (there are some really good ones these days) and literally anything else before he gets his back (meaning spine) operated on.
Back surgery is not a hip replacement or a knee...it is potentially life altering and often not in a positive way.
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Literally anything? More like try everything.
I would talk to a witch doctor about voodoo treatment before I would get back surgery
I kid, sort of
Your spinal column is kinda complicated
https://teachmeanatomy.info/back/bones/vertebral-column/
It moves sort of like a rope made out of a stack of bone blocks(vertebrae) with gel shock absorbers(intervertebral discs) between them, with gel prevented from leaking out by a fibrous wrapping that contains the gel.
The spine is pretty straight, or should be from the front; if you look at it from the side, it is curved, because the bone blocks are semi wedge shaped. Behind the bone/shock absorber column is a roughly triangular shaped space with little struts of bone that stick out the back and to either side of this triangular shaped space. The little struts are where the muscles attach. Looking at a vertebra from the top, you have a sort of round bone, that has this pieces sticking out the back that forms the triangular shaped space that carries the Spinal Cord, which is all the nerves coming out of your melon like a big cable that has smaller cables coming off at each vertebral level. Each of these nerves is often bundled with nerves from the level above or below to form larger nerves, which is the deal with your sciatic nerve, which is like 4 or 5 levels of vertebral nerves bundled together and runs from your lower back to your foot, with the nerve getting smaller as it goes down your leg and gives innervation to structures along the way.
This nerve is big as one of your fingers in your lower back/ass, and can get hung up at a number of different levels. For example, you can have a tight piriformis muscle and it compresses the sciatic nerve, giving you screaming pain down the back of your leg that is quite incapacitating. You can also have an intervertebral disc herniate posteriorly and impinge on the spinal cord.
First thing is to figure out what is causing the symptoms. Surgery is what you think about when all the conservative measures have failed and your quality of life is crap.