[MRM]

Mitch, I'm not a doctor but I've played one. I am a lawyer and I used to do a lot of personal injury defense work. I know enough about the spine to fool MDs for quite a while as long as we stick to that. Anyway, I've seen a lot of scans and I have to say I've never seen a worse spine in my life, including people with pretty serious car accidents with documented orthopedic injuries. My first impression was that you might have gotten the scan at a sub par place and you needed to get another one done to show your real situation. I didn't think that you were a surgical candidate and am glad to hear your docs don't think so either.

You don't need me to tell you that you have one bad back there. Seriously, you are a statistical outlier. I can't give you any medical advice, but I can tell you the things that I have seen help people over my years of talking to people who have sustained back injuries.

Physical therapy is the first and obvious choice. PT is a broad term, but you need something that has an active exercise program. You can't do just passive modalities. To the extend that you possibly can, you need to build up your muscles to compensate for that poor twisted spine. In addition, if it provides you with comfort, do the TENs therapy and massage. Don't be shy about taking anti inflamatories and pain meds. They help quiet down the spasms and that's what you need to have happen. Pain meds were invented to block the pain. Let them do their job. Don't get addicted, but don't suffer needlessly. Massage can be very helpful, as can various forms of passive PT. I think one term is scaling, where the PT sticks his fingers deep into the fascia and stretches is manualy. I did that, along with active exercises, and found wonderful relief. Work on your posture. Bad posture is a cycle where it causes pain, which causes splinting, which causes spasms, which cause pain, etc. Try as hard as you can to observe good posture. Get your gait checked out. Make sure you're walking correctly, get orthodics in your shoes if necessary. Back backs can cause serious gait issues, which then cause serious back issues.

Your MD is right about staying away from chiros. A blown disc could kill you and high velocity chiro adjustments can blow the damaged disk. If you don't have direct disk impingment on the cord or a nerve root, you're not a surgical candidate anyway. But do make sure you get some MRIs and follow up with both an ortho and a neuro specialist who have particular expertise with backs, and extra special subspecialties in scoliosis.

Best of luck. Let us know how it goes and what works best for you.