No patient has been more candid about her feelings about RNI than this woman. She came to RNI for acute back pain that flared up on vacation away from Kansas City. It made her suddenly unable to walk anywhere, shop, or do any other physical activity. For months after she returned home, she used a wheelchair around the house because she couldn’t stand for any length of time to do chores. She used motorized scooters to get her errands done.
She ended up grateful to RNI, both for curing her back pain and for diagnosing and treating her sleep disorder. But along the way she exhibited the kinds of denial, frustration, and stubbornness that we all feel from time to time, especially when we’re suffering. And we are grateful to her for sharing these feelings with us and our visitors.
This first excerpt from her story is the “headline” testimonial that we might have used on its own:
Back Pain Patient Tried Other Physical Therapists, Only Got Relief at RNI
First, just watch the 30 seconds where this RNI patient really makes getting better at RNI sound really easy:
But that’s only a bit of the story. We feel that her story will help patients more if they can see all of the emotions she felt at different points in the journey.
For one thing, she didn’t like it when her doctor told her that she needed to see RNI’s physical therapists to solve her back pain. She wanted to go somewhere more convenient. She may have even felt that RNI was trying to make extra money off her case. Fair enough, we all feel that way sometimes. And the only other places that offer as many services as RNI does for neurology patients are hospitals, with their inflated charges plus additional “facility fees.”
RNI uses a very original approach to neurology care, and it sometimes confuses people. We’re okay with that.
Here’s a headline you don’t expect to see on a doctor’s office website:
Patient Angrily Agrees to RNI Physical Therapy When RNI Doctor Refuses Surgery Referral
So you can see that her case was complicated. After the physical therapist she chose failed, she went through pain medications, spinal injections, patches. Using a walker at home, and electric carts at Target. After so much failed therapy, she got frustrated and angry. She called her RNI doctor to demand a surgery referral.
But then, you can see how much it meant to her when finally, in just 2 sessions with a neurology-focused RNI physical therapist, she began to get relief – and after six sessions she began her new, pain-free life.
Remaining Pain-Free Takes a Little Work Every Day
There is one last piece of the puzzle that she doesn’t really talk about, but it’s important. She was diagnosed at RNI with sleep apnea, and was prescribed a CPAP machine. She swears by her CPAP now. But the important thing to realize is that RNI Sleep Clinic’s diagnosis of her sleep disorder was crucial to curing her back pain and preventing re-injury.
The Sleep and Back Pain Connection
Like many people who know they snore, she had learned to sleep on her side to breathe easier. However, there is a risk to side sleeping that was first discovered at RNI’s research branch, MidAmerica Neuroscience Research Foundation. Side sleeping exacerbates nerve problems along the spine, such as nerve root inflammation like this patient experienced (lumbar radiculopathy). In the neck area it can trigger migraine headaches in susceptible patients.
During REM sleep, the muscles of the body completely relax, letting the body sag against the bed. A body on its back rests evenly, aligning the spine properly and allowing space between the vertebrae for nerves to pass easily. But the spine of a body resting on its side is like a rope bridge, supported at one end by the shoulders and at the other by the hips, and bending unnaturally sideways. The spaces between vertebrae on the “top” side pinch closed, pinching nerve roots and causing inflammation and pain. The pinching initiates a self-feeding cycle, in which the swollen nerve is pinched even worse, which aggravates the nerve and causes more swelling. The only way to break the cycle is sleeping on the back – something patients with sleep apnea can’t do without the aid of a CPAP.
Not every patient comes to RNI with such aggressive pain. And certainly not every patient ends up with a sleep study. But RNI has come to know, from seeing thousands of patients and carefully studying their medical records that when one system breaks down, we must treat the whole patient. Back pain and side sleeping tend to travel together. Patients who come in for migraine headaches might have sleep-related headache triggers. And RNI often approaches problems, successfully, through physical therapy. Not everyone understands at first. But with success comes acceptance, and hopefully stories like this will help the knowledge spread.