23 years old, need advice

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Pauliecoon

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I have been going through this for about 4 years now. Apparently I was born without the disc @ L5-S1. I'll be 24 in 2 weeks. About 4 years ago I started getting terrible nerve pain in my back/hip/right leg. It got so bad that I couldn't stand to take a shower in the mornings. We went through several procedures, injections, grinding bone/disc away to prevent pinching. Nothing seemed to help. In fact, one of my injections caused me to be unable to walk for a few days. This all started when I was either 19 or 20.

Finally, I ended up having a disc replacement done @ L5-S1 back in October of 2009. The pain wasn't gone, but it was barely noticeable for quite some time. Recently (in the past week or so) I've been having quite a bit of pain. The pain peaked yesterday, and is still there today, and is worse than it was before the disc replacement. I'm out of town for the holidays, but will be going home in 2 days. I need to know what kind of steps I should take, what to expect, and what may be causing these problems. Thank you in advance!
 
Hello Paulie,
You are far too young to be having so many back problems, but I'm sure that you have heard that before. Can I ask which type of artificial disc you had placed?
It appears that adr placed at L5-S1 have been shown to cause problems in the lurabar region. It could be several different things, the facet joints may be inflammed and pinching off the nerve rootlets at that level, it could be a problem at another level entirely, it could be subsidence with the adr itself or any of a myriad of other problems.
If I were you , I would start with a consultation with either a orthopedic spine surgeon or a neurological spine surgeon and see about getting a MRI and or CT scan done to see if there are any of the problems that I mentioned.
They can also send you for diagnositic injections and order other tests that may reveal the problem and send you down the road to finding out and hopefully correcting them.
Best wishes to you,
Back
 
Back,

It is a Charite ADR. I can feel some discomfort at L5-S1, I've had problems for so long I've gotten to the point that I can tell which level the problems are coming from. As I said, it's just discomfort, not really pain. There's also some stiffness at that level too. I've been getting intermittent pain a few levels above it, but it comes and goes and isn't that bad. The nerve pain is the problem, as most of you know. It's getting to the point that it makes me nauseous, OTC pain meRAB don't work and I don't have anything prescription. I'm going to be calling my surgeon's office on Monday.
 
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