Sleep and Insomnia

Criteria for REM sleep include not only rapid eye movements but also a rapid low voltage EEG. In mammals, at least, low muscle tone is also seen. Most memorable dreaming occurs in this stage.

Ten years ago I had an MRI showing. Annular tear at L4-5, lumbar pseudospondylolisthesis. Schorl's node at L-2, bilateral sacro-iliitis,osteoarthropathy. I am alyways in pian my feet feel like they are burning and may heels now tingle. Do to no health insurance right now cant not get it check out . Can some one tell me what the above all means in simple words. Thanks

In 2002 I crushed the pars in my back from L1-L5. I was told it would heal. Well here I am 6 years later and I cannot have a normal life because of the pain. When I try to stand or walk my legs start to burn and my feet will either feel numb, tingle or burn, or all of the above. I get out of bed and I almost collapse to the floor because the pain is so great. I cannot stand straight up when I get up out of a chair I have to ease into an upright position. I am on very strong pain medication. As a matter of fact I have to take 10 pills a day for one thing or another. I am depressed, I never want to leave my house. I have to take Prozac. I don't know how to handle this way of life that I have now. I went to rehab and the therapist told me it was my pain, to own and learn to live with it that there was nothing that could be done about it. Well that took away all hope that I ever did have. I am now scheduled to go to a neurologist to see what he can do and I am also scheduled for a pain clinic. My psychologist has given me a book to read on living with chronic pain. I am just tired of everyone acting as if this is in my head. I have a very supportive family, but I just keep expecting that support to end and I will be all alone with my pain. I don't ever feel suicidal but I do get tired of the pain and think to myself sometime that it would be okay if something did happen to me and I died. Last year during an exam I found out that I was suffering from urinary incontinence which is related to the nerve damage in my back, I have arthritis in S1-S2. The bad thing about all this is I am only 38 years old. I have a teenage son and a 21 year old daughter and two beautiful grandchildren. But they all have to come to me for visits cause I wont leave the house. I have applied for disability and it takes so long that I am afraid that we will lose our house while waiting. I do get a small disability check from VA because I was on active duty in military when I was injured. I just need someone to talk to that is going through this too. Someone that understands the uncertainty and hopelessness and helplessness.

Hi,

I am 41 years old and in relatively good health. I had been a fitness quest for about 9 months and worked my way up to jogging as much as 13 miles at a time at a 8.5 minute mile pace. I was also doing eliptical machine, lifting weights, abdominal work, etc... I was probably in about the best shape of my life. Then one morning I woke up with with a terrible hamstring pain in my left leg when I got out of bed. I had been playing some soccer with my 7 year old son and some neighbor boys the day before but had not felt like I did anything to hurt myself. I found that I could strech out my hamstring and the pain would go away until I sat down for any length of time. Then when I stood up it would come back and I would have to stretch it out again. I could walk without too much pain. Sitting at work everyday and driving a car was uncomforable. After a couple of weeks it did not get better so I went to my doctor. He sent me to physical therapy. After a couple of times I found that it was getting worse not better. I was beginning to get pain in my quadriceps area and gluteus minimus area pretty bad too. Really my whole hip. I went back to the doctor after a couple more weeks. He sent me back to physical therapy. It kept getting worse. After a couple of minutes on my feet pain was radiating down my whole left leg, especially my calf. Just standing at the sink putting my contacts in, brushing my teeth, and combing my hair became a nightmare. Walking into work from my car almost brought tears to my eyes. My whole hip and calf area had so much pain that I could not believe it. I have had alot of mostly sports related injuries in my life and nothing even compared remotely to this kind of pain. I went back to the doctor again. He said that a gluteus minimus injury could radiate pain down the leg and even showed me a picture, so I believed him. For a couple more weeks it continued to get worse. I went back to my doctor a 4th time and told him that I was going to die if he didn't do something for me. He told me that no one had ever died from a hamstring or other leg injury before. I told him I agreed with that but that I would likely die from the self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head!!! He finally said O.K. he would refer me for an MRI. This had all taken about 8 weeks from the morning that the hamstring pain had started. I had been taking Vicodin and Motrin 800's like they were candy and by this time they were only able to knock the pain level down from about a 9 to a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. I had not had even the slightest bit of back pain this whole time. Absolutely no indication whosoever of any kind of back injury so I was totally in shock the day after my MRI when they told me that I had a severe L5-S1 disc rupture. But they sent me the MRI films and it was so obvious. They said that the L5-S1 area is where all of the nerves going down your legs are and that this rupture was compressing my spinal cord by about 50%. They sent me to a spine specialist the next day who gave me 2 shots of a steriod and other stuff directly in the spine. Within a few days about half of the leg pain was gone. A week later they had me come back for 2 more shots in the spine. More of the pain went away this time. I can now feel a little pain in the L5-S1 area since most of the leg pain is now gone. The leg pain was soooooo bad initially that I couldn't feel any back pain at all. Every time I stand up my left foot still goes to sleep for a couple of minutes but most of the leg pain is gone. They tell me that I can start walking again and doing some light elliptical but not to bend at the waist at all under any circumstances. They say that in 1 month they will look at it again and if my body has not started to eat up the rupture they would like to go in and trim off the rupture. They say that it would very minimally invasive and there would be no fusing or anything. This scares me but we will see at what happens....

Hello, New to Group. Just had the above double fusion three weeks ago.
So much was not said and still a lot to learn now that surgery is over.
I have many questions and properly can add a lot of comments to discussion.
I just turned 54 years old, white male and started over 17 years ago with herniated disc, (That is when I was first diagnosed with herniated disc). I was attacked at work 4 months ago by a mental health patient. I stressed my back out of wack trying to keep patient from escapping and then pat. got me in headlock. If I had not had to go for consultation and medical exam, and X-RAYS, would not know what shape my spine has gotten into. Will log in latter to ask many many questions. One question is how long is one really out of work. 2nd question-does anyone have BM probems afterwards?

I agree with your comments about thinking it was a hip problem. I thought I would be told that I had some kind of degenerative hip problem like Bo Jackson. I played hockey for years and always seemed to have deep hip bruises during the season. I thought that I must have done some kind of permanent damage over the years. I thought that it would be the end of my professional baseball and football careers! That is if I had professional baseball and football careers! Anyway, I go back on the 25th of July and they will supposedly tell me if they want to go in and trim off the rupture or not. My pain is now getting a little worse again so I would guess they will recommend that I do this. The pain is not nearly as bad as when I wanted to put a bullit in my head every day, prior to the spine shots, but it is definitely getting worse. Thanks for the advice on chiropractics and what book to read.

Mark in Indy