Hi,
My name is Terri and I am a 35 year old mother of 5 and I have been suffering from lower back pain for years but, until recently, I didn't have insurance so I just delt with it. I went to an orthopedic dr. as soon as I could and he did an MRI and said that other than mild scoliosis and some slight degeneration that there was nothing wrong with me and he sent me on my way with no relief. I saw which 3 of the many images from the MRI he looked at and he didn't look at the lower back (tailbone) area at all.
Then back in December I had a ruptured ovarian cyst that the er dr. though was diverticulitus (sp?) so she did a ct scan with contrast which showed that I had "lumbar levoscoliosis with a spondylolisthesis at L5-S1 and early degenerative changes present" I'm sure this was from an abusive ex that threw me down several times...once to the point where I couldn't pick my 2 year old up for almost 2 months.
Just last Thursday I fell really hard on my tailbone and went to the er and they did a ct scan (dr thought I might be passing a kidney stone as well because of pelvic pain that started after the fall) and several xrays. The dr. said that I didn't have any new fractures but that I had aggrivated an old tailbone fracture. BUT when I went to pick up the reports to take to my primary care dr. the reports said that I didn't have any fractures, breaks, compression, displacement or narrowing of the discs, or spondylolithesis. Basically it said that there was nothing wrong at all. But they also forgot to give me the actual films, which I didn't notice til I got home.
I just don't get it. Why would the Dr. tell me that I had an old break if the reports showed nothing (could he have looked at the xrays himself and read different?). And why would the old ct scan have picked up the spondylolithesis but the new one didn't? And one of my biggest ?'s is where do I turn to get relief? I have 5 boys ranging from 16 months to 14 years and I am always in so much pain that I can't keep up with them, much less the house work that goes with it. Please help me understand all this and point me in the right direction. Thanks so much for listening