When I was 18, I worked at a restaurant that catered party tray deliveries. Though a student, I secured a job driving the delivery van on weekends and Christmas holidays.
Being young and feeling invincible, I tended to lift more rather than less, and on this one occasion, I paid the price. As I lifted several boxes, I felt something "pop" in my back. Almost immediately, I started getting pain in my left buttock, which then, over the ensuing days, started radiating down the back of my left leg. It got progressively worse that I couldn't sit in the car for more than 15 minutes without needing to stop, get out and move around to get some relief.
When it was obvious the pain was lingering, I saw a medical doctor. He prescribed painkillers, which only slightly alleviated the pain. I saw physiotherapists, had x-rays, and when the pain was unrelenting, I was referred to an orthopaedic surgeon. He told me that I had a ruptured disc and would need spinal fusion surgery. When I heard that, I had visions of becoming crippled. I told the surgeon, thank you, but I'll have to mull over it.
I never did go back to that surgeon, and over 18 months, somehow the pain subsided––my body had managed to heal itself. What a revelation. That episode and one that my mother had led me to a career in chiropractic. When I had my spine assessed at the chiropractic college, I found that I had spinal issues which predisposed me to the disc problem. It was my first introduction to spinal discs' impact, importance, and how they can become disturbed.
So we hear the terms disc bulge, disc protrusion and disc degeneration. It's important to distinguish between them and what can be done from a chiropractic or medical viewpoint.
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