Coccydynia

Hi . . . My name is Corey [ H i C o r e y ! ] um . . . And I have Coc see dee nee ah! Remember last month's winter wonderland and the evening of sledding fun? Well, apparently, I'm *Still* paying the price of admission. I managed to 'break' my tail bone for a second time that night. The first time was the weekend before I moved to Maryland (Jan 2003). I was fooling around with my rollerblades on the neighbor kid's ramp. Sometimes I forget how many birthday candles I have to blow out each year. Boy, was that a fun drive across the country. Neither time has been confirmed by x-rays (my kidney stone ct scan is the wrong angle to see it properly), but the pain is definitely the same. The doctor (from the first incident) prescribed me some nice muscle relaxants (soma) and pain killers (hydrocodone) which I still have almost all of them. I guess I have a pretty high tolerance for pain. (I still have a bottle of oxycodone from the kidney stones too!) But I digress... So last night, Tara are I trying to watch V for Vendetta (which I enjoyed) and this rude couple left their seats and came back three times! Normally this would just be huge annoyance and completely rude, but for me, it was intensely painful. See, I can handle the pain that is caused from sitting in one position. It just becomes a dull pain after a few minutes and I try not to think about it. The intense pain occurs as soon as I need to change positions. It is like hot knives stabbing my back-side. Once last night, I thought I was going to pass-out (sudden break-out of sweat and light-headedness) and once I got really nauseous. Not my idea of fun. So today, after 5 hours of trail work this morning (about a mile of new trail created at Muddy Branch, MD) and a very deserved nap, I started doing a little research. I love the internet. I found a lot of information plus a whole website for my condition. Say it with me . . . coc see dee nee ah I am hoping that it will heal itself again. I still had a tough time on the long airplane rides but I was pretty much pain free. Some of the people's stories on this site tell of years (10, 20, 30!) of continual, debilitating pain. There's no way I'm going to tough it out that long! If this lasts much longer I will definitely be getting another opinion. :) ______________________ Here are few little bits of info taken from http://www.coccyx.org. Sitting down with an unstable coccyx is like spraining your ankle, then forcing the ankle to bend more than normal. Symptoms of Coccydynia: Pain during or after sitting, the level of pain depending on how long you sit Acute pain while moving from sitting to standing Pain caused by sitting on a soft, but not a hard surface Deep ache around the coccyx Shooting pains down the leg Like sitting on a marble that moves around Like sitting on a knife Like being impaled on a garden cane, with or without chili peppers Secondary Symptoms: Exhaustion, depression, lack of sleep Painful back, from sitting in awkward positions to relieve the pressure on the coccyx Painful feet, from standing too much Other aches and pains around the body 'Fractured coccyx' Doctors quite commonly diagnose 'fractured coccyx', and sometimes 'incomplete fusion of the coccyx'. So far as I can make out, both of these diagnoses are usually wrong, and are based on the idea, given in medical textbooks, that the coccyx is normally fused into one piece in adults. This is not true - doctors who have examined uninjured coccyxes have found that they normally consist of two or more pieces. Doctors who have no experience in this area look at an x-ray of a coccyx of someone in pain, and find that the coccyx is in several pieces, and so assume that it must either have been broken, or it never fused together properly. ______________________ I'll spare you any more details. But I'll add that there appears to be no 'right' treatment. Everything from manual massages (external and internal!) to acupuncture to various injections to surgical removal of the tail bone. Doesn't that sound fun! Bottoms Up!