11/27/12 9:23 PM

Lame calf? From improper warm up?

11/28/12 10:38 AM

Jus' gittin' old.

It tightened up on me. Some serious stretching and I was able to put a couple of miles in this morning on the treadmill.

11/28/12 11:32 AM

in my experience at least, can come from being slightly dehydrated before the run ..

Sandiway

11/28/12 4:26 PM

I suspect you are right. Though mine is still sore.

11/28/12 5:22 PM

I don't run now, but I used to. I had plantar fasciitis, then one day I pulled the Achilles' tendon (sharp pain and I limped for a few days). Now it seldom brothers me, but if I do try to run, I feel it after a couple minutes. Sometimes the pain is felt up in the middle of the calf, but I think it's the same tendon thing. I think the sensation of pain can migrate a bit from the tear site.

11/28/12 11:19 PM

When it rains, it pours.

I gotta go see a neuro doc. I somehow seem to have pinched a nerve in my lower back or hip.
All of a sudden a few days back, the face of my right leg/thigh from hip to below the knee is numb. When I walk, the right leg is late, and it looks like I am limping. No pain per-say, other than if I stand too long I get pins an needles so bad it feels like it burns.

Oye!
I decided to break into a run today, and that made it go away after a few strides.. So I am Forrest Gump now apparently...

11/29/12 12:58 AM

LBB - check - having a lumbar laminectomy on 12/12.
Achilles injury - check - had a total avulsion back in 2009...the rehab from that sucked worse than my bike crash last year.

Oh, and the joy of #20 cardioversion this past weekend for atrial flutter.

R.E.M. sing along time..."It's the end of the world as we know it....but I feel _____"

Good luck on your recovery Rick - a little over a year ago and it was snap crackle pop for me as well - left side ribs all cracked, sternum, and collapsed lung...which sucked the worse because they did not insert a drainage tube so guess how you get to expel the phlegm....coughing, that's how, and lots of it...and that is NOT something you want to do with those fractures....spent a month hugging pillows.

11/29/12 7:16 AM

Yow, Mag, you've been taking it on all fronts. Good luck with he back surgery.

I've had a couple of back incidents recently. Generally my back is fine, but a couple of times, after getting up out of the car, I'll get a sharp pain in my left lower back, and then an almost shock like feeling if I try to put weight on my left leg (I'm perfectly comfortable sitting in the car). I do some stretches and after a few minutes I'm fine. Then a few weeks later the same thing may happen. Seems to me like there may be some instability and something in the back shifts around a bit and a nerve gets hit, then with stretching it shifts back. I'll see a doc if it worsens, but anyone had anything like this?

11/29/12 8:14 AM

anyone had anything like this?

maybe a compressed or partial herniated disc would be a guess...

I am wondering if this company compact car, both a stick and VERY low to get out of may not be annoying something similarly...

11/29/12 9:41 AM

Yeah, I went from being a guy who had never been in the hospital, never had a crash, played all kinds of sports, basketball, tennis, racquetball, even competitive wallyball if you know what that is...until age 45 and then the atrial madness started...first fib and after two ablations, now flutter but still the same boogey man who follows like a shadow waiting to strike. Getting cardioversions is like a drive thru for me anymore.

What you describe is likely what Mr. Sparky advises as impingement but it may not be of a disk variety. It could also be an osteophyte (bone spur) that is impinging the nerve root.

A good test to see if you are having chronic impingment is to try walking on your heels and then your toes....I was surprised that I had lost the ability to support weight on my left heel when the neuro doc asked.

Years ago when in my mid life crisis prime of life, I decided it was time to get a sports car so I got a shiny new Mitsubishi 3000GT VR4 which was fine at first, but at 6'4" and an ever growing girth, to be comfortable I had to have the seat all the way down and back which was comfortable sitting, but one day I drove to a seminar and my co-presenter had to come out to the parking lot and pull me out...crazy. That was back (pun) in 1995....so maybe you have a ways to go before the knife. Best wishes on that.

11/29/12 10:10 AM

I just tried walking around toes and heels. Toes much better, heels... no my back hurts and the slow leg was slower....

See what the doc sez..


As far athletics in younger life, for me: I am sure that all did more harm then good.
Motocross [seemed like a good idea at the time] ski life [2006 tib/fib/plateau fractures] Late 2000, flight from road bike @ 25 MPH and upper body bangup/fractures.

Isn't life fun? ;)

11/29/12 10:18 AM

Well I'm aware of impingement from various sources, but what I don't quite understand is that 99.9% of the time I'm fine and I just get these very short episodes, widely separated. Right now I can walk on heels and toes fine. Hopefully the episodes willl not be getting more frequent...

11/29/12 10:19 AM

If anyone had any doubts that this forum is populated by a bunch of old farts, this thread would dispel them. :-)

11/29/12 10:43 AM

quote:

---

to be comfortable I had to have the seat all the way down and back

---

11/29/12 11:05 AM

don't quite understand is that 99.9% of the time I'm fine and I just get these very short episodes"


once the nerve or trunk swells from an event, it is a lot closer to the things touching it??

11/29/12 11:12 AM

Hi Dan,

Come up to Greater Brunswick Physical Therapy and have Cindy Folsom check out your back. She's a savant with chronic back pain. By the way I enjoyed seeing you in your new commercial during the Anderson Cooper live show yesterday. If I ever need help with my Medicaire in a few years I'll definitely give you a call!!

11/29/12 12:05 PM

"I am wondering if this company compact car, both a stick and VERY low to get out of "

No clutch for me anymore. I spent a long time suspecting the use of one targeted my back. So I drove stick after a long break from them. By the stop sign at the first corner I was miserable, I'd only made it to maybe 3rd gear by then.

The thing is though, it's my clutch side, yours is on your gas side.

Well, for that I say the lifting of the leg in a small car kind of does the same thing, gas or clutch.

Numbness sucks long term. This is serious. To me it means your leg isn't getting the message. Modern imaging might help find the problem, but if it's something LIKE piriformis syndrome it's going to be tough to diagnose.

11/29/12 1:41 PM

"Anybody had anything like this?"

A lot of different things can cause sudden sharp pains in the back (and, conversely, even in remote parts but which are spine-related).

I caught a respiratory infection after breathing dust while sweeping, and this quickly led to a case of intestinal inflammation which caused sporadic, crippling pain spikes in or about my spine. I think that somehow a nerve was being tugged, but in any case it cleared up in a week or two, and that was years ago, glad to say.

25 years earlier, a car that I bought had a seat shape which, while comfortable to drive, led to a localized spinal flexing that caused a similar sort of chronic and sporadic spasm. The pain didn't seem to occur while driving, so it was a lucky coincidence that I subsequently started driving the Audi 5000s to work and school, since the problem cleared up shortly after changing cars. I then sold the 1984 Honda Accord with the problematic seating.

Also, in high school, I had back spasms which led to an xray, and the doc telling me it looked like I "might have disc damage".
A coach in college, just months later, suggested starting a situp routine, and the problem went away for good. Imagine if I had pursued surgery?

Moral of story is the cause of back (or other) pain can be very difficult to diagnose, and may not be caused by any of the usual, seemingly-likely causes such as disc injury, even (especially?) when talking to a doctor!
Back spasm pain is so irritating that patients may jump at the opportunity for a surgical cure, even if an intestinal distension or muscle imbalance is at the root of the cause.
I've also experienced leg numbness a couple/few times while riding which seemed to always turn out to be digestive-related if you know what I mean.
In each case, the numbness was accompanied with the onset of leg cramping, which suggested to me that circulation out to my legs was somewhat impaired.
Lastly, a disproportionate number of odd physical ills seem to correlate to the onset of winter's harsh weather and the relative loss of fitness, fwiw.

11/29/12 2:45 PM

>>By the way I enjoyed seeing you in your new commercial during the Anderson Cooper live show yesterday. If I ever need help with my Medicaire in a few years I'll definitely give you a call!!<<

Actually that commercial was shot in 2001. I'm going down to New Orleans next week where a new series of commercials is being put together from footage shot up here this summer. These are likely to include shots of me riding the bike, among other things.

As to PT, it will have to get quite a bit worse before that. My wife having been an OT, I am well hooked into the PT/OT network...But I will keep Cindy's name in mind.

I agree with DDDD that surgery is a last resort. A big part of my job is reading medical records, and surgery ain't a cure-all (to say the least). A few years ago I was having a different type of symptoms which my PCP correctly diagnosed as spasm and gave me a bunch of exercises that cleared it up completely.

The car seat thing is interesting, as my seats seem completely comfortable, but the issue does seem to arise after getting out of the car. I really like the car, but maybe my longterm health will require me to seek another. Maybe I'll go up to Ottawa and check the seats on Paul D's Vette and Caddy....

11/29/12 2:57 PM

About the car seats, that Honda was pretty low to the ground, and while getting in and out wasn't stressing the ol' skeleton, the much more upright seating in the Audi (and subsequent new, --now 24-yr-old-- pickup truck that I still drive) kept the spine aligned so as to counter the gravitational forces while driving.

My spine began to recover within weeks of using the Audi, and I was able to make the Honda driveable for me (before finally selling it) by removing the seatback cushion and fitting a 1 sq ft piece of .060 aluminum over the lower half of the seatback springs that backed the seatback cushion.
I even have a picture of it somewhere around here showing the installation.

11/29/12 7:31 PM

I got in the car to go to an inspection, an 1-1/2 hr drive. Although the numbness is there, I had not got any rear pain. Until about 10-15 minutes into the trip. I was in terrible pain.

It occurred to me the seat belt part on the belt angles back toward me when hooked in. When I raise my leg off the gas for each shift it hits the leg right at the hip, right at the joint.

I hooked it into the passenger belt receptacle, getting it off my hip and 5" to the right, and low and behold the pain when away [mostly]. Does not help that the seat all the way back is not quite back enough for me. So angling the leg out to the right so it does not hit the wheel.. yadi yada...

Still numb down the leg, so some nerve damage seems to have occurred.

Getting a different car tomorrow, and seeing the Neuro Monday Morning...

Last edited by Sparky on 11/30/12 7:56 AM; edited 1 time in total

11/29/12 8:49 PM

Definitely agree to have the tests done before going under the knife.
MRI, plus EMG, plus CT Myelogram was my sequence.
"Old farts" - yeah....I get reminded everytime I have to scroll down my year of birth on these scrolling online forms....1958 keeps getting further down the list. *sigh*

11/30/12 1:52 PM

Stopped by a couple of times this week.

He's feeling better and is walking around the house some. Attempted, sucessfully, the stairs to the bedroom level today.

Progress...but not quite prime, yet...

PH, who can't type worth a damn

11/30/12 2:27 PM

Youngster.

11/30/12 5:12 PM

lol - thank you, kindly. :-)