So no shiz there I was, In afghanistan...

[275RLTW]

1) Why were you doing officer/computer work in the first place? You can't spell "officer" without "office." The appropriate response would have been "not now, sir...I'm actually doing work here."

2) DO NOT let the Army do ANY surgery...Nor the VA.

3) Nows the time to swallow your pride and fully use your profile. Let your back completely heal before pushing yourself. It's better to recover from that once than every 6 months...

[airborneranger]

1) Why were you doing officer/computer work in the first place? You can't spell "officer" without "office." The appropriate response would have been "not now, sir...I'm actually doing work here."

2) DO NOT let the Army do ANY surgery...Nor the VA.

3) Nows the time to swallow your pride and fully use your profile. Let your back completely heal before pushing yourself. It's better to recover from that once than every 6 months...

1) He is an RTO, so he is stuck in the TOC

2) Good advice

3) Better advice

[Flatline]

Active duty and seeing Competent Orthopedic surgeon is like dog and cat.

Go to the aid station every day until they get tired of you and send you else where, or give you a 115 for "not maning up"

Don't I know, I only ever had one good ortho in my experience with the military, he took care of my broken ankle, broken rib and finally (after I trusted he care from my previous injuries) my ACL reconstruction.

As it turns out tricare hates patients more than the military likes to keep incompetent surgeons, and I had to call my doc on his personnel phone to get an appointment with him.

Unfortunately he retired. If your at Evans I heard Dr White is the best ortho there, but there is very much a qualifier. If you can, try to go to the AFA, their docs a generally better than at Evans.

[Sharpienads]

So no shit there I was, In afghanistan, sitting on RTO minding my own business when the LT asks me to come check out his printer's connectivity issues. I go to take a look, and as soon as I lean over to look at the cat5 cable, I get a shooting pain in my back. My right nut feels weird and my right leg starts hurting and gets weak. I go to the aid station and get told that I probably have a herniated disc... and kindly handed a bag of ibuprofen. How the heck does a 21 year old get a herniated disc?!

Ahhh, ibuprofen, aka Vitamin M. The military's cure-all.

Hope it turns out it's nothing serious.

[Scanker19]

Don't I know, I only ever had one good ortho in my experience with the military, he took care of my broken ankle, broken rib and finally (after I trusted he care from my previous injuries) my ACL reconstruction.

As it turns out tricare hates patients more than the military likes to keep incompetent surgeons, and I had to call my doc on his personnel phone to get an appointment with him.

Unfortunately he retired. If your at Evans I heard Dr White is the best ortho there, but there is very much a qualifier. If you can, try to go to the AFA, their docs a generally better than at Evans.

Supposedly there is an even better guy there now. I have no faith in that ortho clinic on carson. I'll see soon enough as I doubt I'm getting back to Vail before I lose my tricare. I have not been a happy camper at the ortho clinic on post. However now that I am off AD I have an actual MD as a PCM so I don't really have to bullshit around with worthless PAs or sick call to get a simple referral. Nothing like the medical advice of a PV2.

Ahhh, ibuprofen, aka Vitamin M. The military's cure-all.

Hope it turns out it's nothing serious.

TMC- Tylenol, Motrin, and Crutches.

[TheBelly]

OP, there is a rotation of physical Therapy docs. they come through your ao every once in a while. the one we have is pretty good.

[Jefe's AR]

Didn't read all the post so sorry if I'm just repeating others input.

Same thing happened to me a when I was about 27. Felt like someone was squeezing my nut, the right one, just enough to make it hurt. Squeeze for a bit then let go, repeat. Forever. Went through it for years until I was finally given an MRI after it flared real bad and nailed my sciatic nerve real good. Woke me from a dead sleep. I stood straight up and then hit the ground. I was in so much pain I could barely move for hours. Had to piss in a diaper (had little kids then) because I couldn't stand up to get to the toilet. Believe me, I tried. More than once. It was excruciating.

I'm 43 now and it just a game of good days and bad. I did have a nice stint for a couple of years w/ little pain but then I got hit w/ 1.5 years of constant pain. It's weird how it's moved/changed. No more nut pain. Mostly muscle pain.

I have an inversion bed. It can help quite a bit at times. Stretching can help. Exercise is likely the best solution. You want to work on your core.

Saw this last week. Gives me some hope.
Click the link for video.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3445_162...%3BcbsCarousel

(CBS News) Back pain is one of the most common of human complaints, which is why new treatments in the works are raising so many hopes. Our Sunday Morning Cover Story is reported now by Martha Teichner:

Consider the human spine, in all its glory.

The 24 vertebrae, cushioned by gelatinous discs . . . the little facet joints that help make your back flexible . . . all the ligaments and muscles and nerves.

The spine's elegant complexity is a miracle of engineering, or a curse when something goes wrong.

Eight out of ten Americans will experience debilitating back pain sometime in their lives.

"My pain was very excruciating," said Lenda. "I couldn't walk, I couldn't bend over. I couldn't lie down."

"I'd say, 'Oh Lord, can't you help my back, it does hurt bad' - he didn't help me a bit," said Leila.

And the most common culprit?

"I think most people would think it's the inter-vertebral discs, whether it's herniated or whether it's just worn and arthritic and associated with pain," said Dr. Augustus White, a professor at Harvard Medical School. He has literally written the book on lower back pain.

He says the easiest way to understand a herniated disc is to think of a jelly doughnut: When what Dr. White calls "the jelly" gets squeezed out, it presses on nerves, which can mean excruciating pain. Barring serious illness, the first line of treatment may not be what the patient (who only wants a quick fix) wants to hear.

"You need to make sure the patient doesn't have tumor or infection," said Dr. White, "but once you rule those out, you can be confident that you're not going to harm the patient by saying, 'OK, give yourself four to six weeks.'"

Believe it or not, 90 percent of disc injuries heal themselves after a few weeks, especially with physical therapy. But waiting it out can be torture, and not everybody gets better. So that's where surgery comes in.

More than 1.2 million Americans undergo spinal surgery each year. That's more than TRIPLE the number of coronary by-pass surgeries (415,000), and nearly FOUR TIMES the number of hip replacements (327,000).

Approximately 300,000 of those back surgeries were spinal fusions, where vertebrae are joined surgically so they can't move. They're often held in place, permanently, with metal screws or rods.

[rondog]

It really doesn't take much to blow out a disc, sometimes they're just weak and the right combination of lifting, bending or twisting will do it. This is what one looks like, FWIW. Pretty easy to see, the one on the bottom with the red arrow is a herniated disc. The green arrow is a bulging disc, the blue arrow is a normal one. Injuries at the L5/S1 joint (where the red arrow is) are very common. Pick up something heavy and twist at your waist, and that can do it.

My wife had surgery for a herniated disc identical to this one in '97, and has been fine ever since. But she suffered horribly until they did the surgery. And she got the injury by lifting a case of soda and twisting to set it somewhere else.

Oh, BTW, I had back surgery in October and again in March. The first time they took it easy on me, and just tried a gentle fix, but the problem moved lower. The second time, they didn't fuck around. Took out pieces of my vertebrae that time, pretty gruesome. But the worst part, I think, is they have to cut through all the back muscles to get to the spine, and there's several layers and types of muscles. Then they have to sew them back together and they have to knit back together. That's where I get most of my pain from, is back muscles. But it's been 2 months and every day is better, as long as I don't overdo it and piss 'em off.



This kinda shows the sources of various kinds of sciatica pain. If it hurts in a certain area, this gives an idea of which joint there may be a nerve getting pinched. Since you're talking about a nut, I'd guess a problem higher up, like L2 or L1 even. Nerves from different spine joints send pains to different areas. But only a real Orthopedic Surgeon could tell you for sure, and will likely need an MRI.

[josh7328]

wow I didn't know this forum was such a wealth of knowledge on back pain! Thanks, sir, I'll try to catch the ortho guy when he comes through here, or on my next trip to your place, whichever comes first.

[airborneranger]

wow I didn't know this forum was such a wealth of knowledge on back pain! Thanks, sir, I'll try to catch the ortho guy when he comes through here, or on my next trip to your place, whichever comes first.

If you get a referral off-post, ask for this guy:

Dr. Bee - http://www.healthgrades.com/physicia...ames-bee-3yl3w