It seems like back pain is going around in my family. My mother\u2019s back started to hurt in July and it was a couple months before it felt normal. Then my father\u2019s back started to hurt right before he left for India, but it seemed to feel better after a couple of week. Next up, it was my turn.<\/p>\n
A couple weeks ago, I woke up with pain in the lower left part of my back. I\u2019ve woken up with back pain before in the past, usually from a hotel bed. It will go away after I\u2019ve been up for a few hours. No such luck this time. When my parents went to the doctor, they got the generic diagnosis. For my mother, she was also sent to get an MRI and physical therapy. Her MRI looked normal and PT didn\u2019t seem to be doing much. My father was just given a muscle relaxant. They were both also told to employ RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation) and take Ibuprofen.<\/p>\n
So I went with the generic treatment, RICE and anti-inflammatories. It didn\u2019t help much at all. I am currently in physical therapy, so it was pretty easy to ask my PT about it and have her take a look. Even better for me, she has a lot of experience with back pain. So she started to dig around and found my lower back muscles were out of whack, \u201cknots\u201d and \u201cstrings\u201d aplenty. She worked quite a few out using myofascial release. My back hurt in a different way (from what she did) for a couple days. It feels significantly better, but I think I need to have some more work done.<\/p>\n