A painful back is a nightmare to live with, but is a common chronic burden to bear for millions of people. Back ache makes even the simplest of tasks a major undertaking and can literally remove all joy from a patient’s life.
Severe back pain has been described by many doctors as the single most agonizing experience a person will ever endure in their life. As a fellow back pain patient, I can swear to the validity of this statement, since I myself suffered from horrible pain for 18 long years before finding a cure. This is no way to live.
This dialog delves into the actual experience of living with chronic back pain.
Painful Back Stories
You have back pain. The suffering might have come on slowly or suddenly. Maybe the pain seems to be the result of some type of injury or accident. Maybe that accident is the real cause of the discomfort, or maybe it was simply a trigger.
The doctors have diagnosed the apparent cause of your pain and have tried a variety of therapy options. However, the symptoms are getting worse and seem to resist all forms of treatment. None of your care providers have a clear cut answer why you are not getting better.
You consult a small army of doctors and alternative medicine therapists, but still do not find any relief for your pain. What you do find is mental confusion, since there seems to be several different diagnoses and dozens of proposed reasons why the condition has not improved.
Several doctors are recommending back surgery. This prospect frightens you, but the thought of living in constant pain is even worse. You are thinking seriously that surgery might be your last hope. Meanwhile, your back ache continues to worsen and is now truly controlling almost every aspect of your life. Does this sound like you? It certainly sounds like the way I used to be.
Painful Back Conditions
Medical science loves to blame a painful back on numerous spinal abnormalities. Disc conditions, vertebral conditions, and soft tissue conditions account for the majority of back pain diagnoses. These abnormalities might have been caused by an injury or a degenerative process. It is possible for either of these scenarios to actually cause back pain. However, these conditions respond well to most forms of medical treatment and usually heal in a relatively defined time frame. Long-term chronic suffering is rarely the result of any common anatomical abnormality.
Unresolved back pain is almost always the result of a misdiagnosis of the actual causation of the expression while usually blaming it on some innocent and coincidental back pain scapegoat condition. This is one of the basic truths I have seen in the treatment sector for decades now, with little hope of it ending in the near future.
Alternative Causes of Back Pain
Some patients who are suffering from treatment-resistant back pain have been misled as to what is really causing their symptoms. Many of these patients actually suffer from psychological back pain, which can not be cured by any physical medical or alternative treatment. Any relief they have received has been a combination of symptomatic treatment and placebo effect. This explains why the pain always comes back.
Symptom escalation demonstrates the psychological nature of the expression by constantly making the pain intensify, change, and seek to control the consciousness of the patient. Neither the doctor, nor the patient, has any clue that a psychological process is responsible for the pain syndrome. Therefore, the treatments fail and the patient is left to suffer with little hope for a true cure. Most eventually acquiesce to the idea of some drastic treatment, such as surgery. This is a shame, since the physical defect that is corrected is not the actual cause of the pain and so the symptoms continue.
Many patients receive poor surgical results and failed back surgery syndrome is common. Other patients receive a placebo cure from the surgery and develop a new set of back pain substitute symptoms. The process begins anew and will continue until the psychological issues for the pain are discovered and addressed. A patient can literally give up most of their life pursuing medical treatments for a variety of psychological pain syndromes while never finding the real cause of their suffering.
Painful Back Ordeals
If you are reading this article and saying: “That is me”, then it is time for a shift in your perception of the actual cause of your painful back. You have already tried everything the doctors have advised with no success. You must reconsider everything you have been told about your pain. If the diagnosis is not right, then it is no surprise that you find yourself in such a desperate predicament now. Start over and try to discover the exact nature of your painful complaint. This works wonders for many patients who finally get back on track after year of treating the wrong suspected source of symptoms.
At this point, what do you have to lose? Consider knowledge therapy as a risk and cost-free alternative. Learn and heal. Heal and live. Live and enjoy life. Enjoy life and find there is so much good in the world without the tremendous burden of chronic back pain. Whatever path your choose, I hope that you will enjoy better results this time around and find lasting respite from your torturous pain.
