Compression L1 fracture - been over 3 months, still having pain in lower back after walking.....
Posted , 6 users are following.
hello, just started here so looking to share experiences, info and advice.
I sustained a L1 compression fracture [pancake shape] after a road traffic accident. MRI confirmed L1 fracture that has been treated conservatively by bracing because the nerve root was not affected.
Now several months after walking small distances, hours later I pay with debilitating low back pain and aching that lasts for days. Has anyone here had a similar lumbar fracture that has had or is having continuing lower back pain and how, if you managed, did you eventuallly achieve less pain?
Also what are the best low risk muscle strengthening exercises for the lumbar region after a lumbar compression fracture.
All advice will be much appreciated - thank you in advance!
Diana [Brighton]
1 like, 11 replies
caroline79096 diana57263
Posted
Ouch please take it easy. I'd think a physio would help you best. But easy yoga type stretching should help. Working on the core muscles helps too.
But just do a small amount and build up slowly.
It will take a while to heal up good luck x
diana57263 caroline79096
Posted
......yes it's going to take patience and perserverence when building my core muscles up so I'm taking it slowly and avoiding the longer walks for the time being.
james57451 diana57263
Posted
I know how you feel, I also fractured my L1 3 months ago in a car accident, my fracture was severe though and so I had to have surgery so I have 6 screws and 2 rods in the spine to stabilise it.
I don't seem to have lower back pain after walking though, if I was to try and bend I have extreme pain on my right side and my hip seems to give me a lot of pain also. I do have lower back pain if I try to arch my back or do awkward movements.
Have you started physiotherapy and are you still wearing your brace? I was given two simple exercises when leaving the hospital; knee to chest stretch and the pelvic tilt. These seem to help a bit, they help you feel a little bit looser and a bit more flexible afterwards. I have only started proper physio a week ago as I had to give the fracture time to start healing, it is still badly fractured as I had an X-ray one week ago but it is healing.
Other exercises that seem to help are laying down on your stomach and lifting your torso up using your arms whilst keeping your pelvis and legs relaxed.
Heat seems to help with the pain but it is only temporary, also painkillers help slightly for a while too.
diana57263 james57451
Posted
....sorry to learn your L1 fracture was that serious and is still in the healing process. Since you had screws and rods inserted into your spine, I guess it might have been dislocated or impinging on the nerve root, is that what happened to you?
?My L1 fracture is going on 4 months now, will be seeing the Ortho consultant end of this week so I will be aiming to find out if the fracture has healed, hopefully without further problems.
?At present no more walks longer than around the block which has lessened the lower back pain, it takes about 2 days to recover from a longer walk from pain.
?Only wear a brace for short periods at home and not all the time but if going out will wear it then for support.
?Soon will start having massages so will see if this will help in conditioning the muscles in my lower back and as to physio, yes I do try the knee to chest and pelvic tilt exercises but not the lying on one's stomach while lifting the arms exercise as I think this exercise would be too stressful for my back in its present condition.
?My chiropractor showed me the x-ray of the L1 fracture and it appears to look now more like a pancake, really small against a healthy wide vertebrae! Now I have a slight bulge of the L1 vertebrae bone that is remaining when I touch the surface of my lumbar region, so it was not a compressed wedge fracture I had but more of a pancake one without the syrup!
?I've also checked the best sleeping positions on Youtube which is helpful, I also found when the pain is on, heat really does not alleviate it, only rest, although I use infrared from time to time. Avoiding pain medication now because during the 3 month period of taking morphine I had two attacks of esophogial spasm [felt more like a heart attack, really excruiating pain behind the breast bone lasting several minutes] - when I checked this, I found morphine can cause OS in some people as with other types of medication.
allaroundanne diana57263
Posted
Most people don't realize this, but physical therapists actually have a Phd. That's right, they have a doctorate degree. I would really recommend you get a referral for PT and start your rehab under their guidance. Your low back pain is an indication of poor core strength. You probably need to start off in the pool to alleviate some of the effect of gravity on you as you are so very weak right now and build up to working out on land. But, as I stated, you need to be under the care of a PT who can give you a whole well thought out plan for the next 3-4 months as that's how long it will probably take to get you back to where you were pre-accident. Good luck!
diana57263 allaroundanne
Posted
....yes you are right about poor core strength and using a pool to avoid the effect of gravity. My physio has given me simple low strain exercises to try, but as you say it will take months to achieve muscle strength in my lower back and as I'm not near a swimming pool, it's going to have to land exercises.
CHICO_MARX diana57263
Posted
My daughter is an ACSM- and ACE-certified professional trainer and graduate nutritionist. 5' 1", 122 pounds of solid muscle. Kicks P90X's a$$. Over a decade ago she was squatting 310 pounds (usually close to her max) and slipped. Her spotter missed most of the bar and she landed on her butt, folded up and got hit by the weight.
Compression fracture of L1 and microfractures of her sternum. Meds, body brace, etc. for quite a while. Docs declared her cured but she had enormous continuing pain. On Vicodin for 2 years; teeth started to rot. Saw lots of docs for lots of possible causes. Finally got her to Mt. Sinai Hospital in NYC (the Spine Capital of the World). Neurosurgeon checked her out and ordered and MRI not of her back again, but of her PELVIS!!!
The end result was that she had completely shattered her coccyx (tailbone) and no one ever thought to look for that as a possible cause. Everyone concentrated on spine and hips. A coccyx fracture is a very rare diagnosis since very few docs even consider it...but the MRI was totally conclusive. It's a very delicate surgery to remove the shattered fragments of a tailbone but she got through it. Lots of pain for a while but now she's back to about 95% of normal.
No therapy, meds, manipulation, etc. could have fixed this problem...it's 100% surgical. After two years of constant pain, she's pain-free...has been for 10 years. Just think about it...
allaroundanne CHICO_MARX
Posted
I am curious Chico, where was her continuing pain, that from her shattered coccyx, located? I know from my practice that a lot of pain is hard to diagnose because it gets referred and so the true culprit of the pain, ie where the pain is from, isn't where the pain is felt. Is that what was going on here? Is that why they missed the diagnosis? Or was just no one listening to your daughter? I am surprised they didn't consider a coccyx injury in the original workup given how you have described how the injury occured; landing on your butt followed by 310 pounds landing on you. How is she now? Does she still lift weights?
CHICO_MARX allaroundanne
Posted
Docs looked at disks, SI joints, and more...but nothing below the sacrum. Only when we got to Mt. Sinai did the neurosurgeon consider looking lower. When we went back with the MRI, she showed us the axial view, telling us that "you will see the tailbone start to curve and end in a point". Frame by frame, the curve started until you started seeing little pieces of shattered bone. When we got to the end, there was no "point", just shards of scattered bone fragments. It was a lightbulb moment for all of us...Kate, me and her uncle who's an ER doc.
Neuro said that in 25 years of practice, she had only done 5 of these surgeries...and she was the most experienced one in the procedure at all of Mt. Sinai! The surgery is very delicate due to the proximity of the intestines. Really painful recovery (I can't imagine how she moved her bowels...) but got past it. Kate's a nutritionist and experienced trainer so she put herself back on a "schedule". I remember her emailing me about a victory moment where she was able to sit through a 2-hour movie without pain for the first time in years. Also did a ton of yoga.
Right now, she rates herself as 95% of what she could do before. No very heavy lifting anymore. Lots of reps and cardio. Pretty much zero pain from there anymore. But fourteen months after her son, Jonathon was born almost 5 years ago, she got diagnosed at age 35 with Stage 3, Type C, BRCA-1 breast cancer...same thing that killed her mother, my first wife Susan, in 1983 at the age of 34, Kate was 5 at the time. We found Sue's cancer when Kate was 6-months old. Coincidence?
Seven weeks after she started chemo, the tumor doubled in size...docs gave her a year to live. Her brother called "Road Trip" and came back from Colorado with "tincture". Once she titrated up to 7-8 "drops" a day (a drop is the size of a grain of rice), the tumor was half its size in two weeks and undetectable at four. Docs couldn't explain it. She had a double mastectomy three months later; her docs expected 20% residual cells and a few lymph nodes. Pathology report: all zeroes...nothing...zippo. Again, the docs couldn't explain it...but we can! All her scans have been negative since then; she takes a "drop" a day as a prophylactic. Cured of a death sentence from cancer...just like that...
So now she lives a normal, pretty much pain-free life and we hope she keeps that up for the next 60+ years...
allaroundanne CHICO_MARX
Posted
Wow, what an amazing story Chico, I too hope she stays healthy and happy! Gosh, when it rains, it pours. It's a scary thing now with all this genetic information we now have available when you start thinking about having a child. My illness, hemochromatosis, is nothing like breast cancer to pass along, but I feel fortunate I didn't have my diagnosis during our childbearing years. I feel so darn guilty now about all four of them being carriers. I constantly keep myself informed about risks that exist for carriers of the disease. I can't imagine having to worry over passing on a possibly fatal cancer gene. You and your daughter have my most heartfelt sympathies. I wish they had a hugging emoji on here.
Lynn
CHICO_MARX allaroundanne
Posted
I have Thalassemia trait (Cooley's Anemia)...very Sicilian/Mediterranian. One of my kids is clean, one is borderline, the last has the trait. Have to educate them about whom they can/should marry. Get tested; you don't want your child to get the full-blown disease and end up dead. This is all serious stuff... I had to get down with it when we found Kate's mom Susan's breast cancer at age 30...changed my life forever. Sometimes you have to grow up faster than you want to.