I do.  I don’t think anyone knows about it except my husband.  But lately I feel like it has been getting worse and worse and I don’t know what to do about it.

It started a couple of years ago.  I was shopping in a grocery store, which have hard concrete floors of course.  I was wearing flip flops, and slipped in a puddle that was on the floor.  I fell on my back and my butt, HARD…onto the concrete.  I had x-rays done and everything.  They only showed a hairline fracture in the coccyx.

It actually took a couple of months before my back REALLY started hurting.  I fell in April, and starting going to physical therapy in July.  I went for about a month, and then stopped because my back pain was much better, almost nonexistent.  However, in the last few months, it has returned and is worse than ever before.

Every morning when I wake up, my back is SO stiff, and it hurts to get out of bed.  Every night when I go to bed, I lay on the heating pad for a while, but it only makes my back feel better while I am still laying on it.  I can’t lay on the heating pad all day though–I stay home with my son and I’ve gotta get up and be with him.  I am determined to stay away from prescription painkillers if at all possible.  So I’ve tried ibuprofen, aleve, tylenol, excedrin, et cetera.  Nothing helps.

Of course some days are worse than others–when we go somewhere and are walking all day long, by the end of the night my back hurts so bad I can hardly move.  I am glad my son is now 3, because it means much less picking him up, and I know that was not helping the situation.  But I know that I am not being the best possible mom I can be because of the pain I am in, and I feel horrible about it.

I’m only 26 years old and I feel like it will only get worse as I get older.  I really don’t want that to happen!  So I’d love any advice anyone can offer me!  We do have insurance, but I don’t think we can really afford for me to go back to physical therapy every week–and I think it would also be a temporary solution.  I have also thought about going to a chiropractor–but the pain is in my lower back soft tissue, not in my spine, and isn’t that what chiropractors deal with?  Maybe I should start exercising more but I am not sure if the pain would get worse or better.  I’m at a loss.

I’d really love to hear from anyone else who suffers from chronic pain of any kind.  How do you deal with it?  We all just want to feel well.  🙂