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Lumbar spine injury and tailbone pain

(4 discussions)

I recently injured my lumbar spine location L5. I had an MRI to confirm this. I am however having pain right above my tailbone. I am wondering if a L5 injury can cause pain in a different part of the spine like that. It hurts to sit on it and it feels like there is a bump on my tailbone. I can’t lay in the tub without pain in that area. It also hurt when I walk and sit.


4 comments

    Dr. Brian

    9 10

    You may also have a tailbone/coccyx bruise. How did you hurt yourself? Did you fall on your tailbone? If not, then an L5 disc with nerve involvement can cause pain in other areas of your body. The spinal nerves pass by the L5 disc on the way out to the rest of the spine. If you pinch a nerve, everything below that nerve can be affected.

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      9 10

      Hi, I suffer daily and nightly. About 20 years ago, I had surgery on my lower back, it was the second one in the same place. The first one they removed the offending part of a ruptured disc and that helped for awhile. Then they did a fusion. Later on I had x-rays that showed that the bones they put around that vertebrae was just gone. I don’t know what to do anymore. At this point, I don’t feel that surgery is an option. I “toggle” when I bendand it could lead to serious complications if I were to fall really hard. Your advice?

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    9 10

    I injured it by lifting a very heavy object. I helped my husband carry a treadmill into the house. Those are very heavy. I am sure you know that though. Could I have ripped the tissue surrounding my tailbone? I recently noticed that when I bend over towards my toes it feels really tight right around the tailbone. I can feel the tissue pulling tight. It did not hurt to do this so I very gently just hung over forward to try to stretch it a little. Not a good idea since it started hurting worse again after that. I have been doing stretching exercises that my doctor had given me I guess I’ll stick to those for quite a while. I still cannot lay on my back. I feel pressure in the coccyx area. It feels like it is under the bone. It has been doing a lot better though. I haven’t had to take any pain meds lately until I tried that bending over thing and now I am back to taking aspirin. How long can something like this take to heal? It has been 2 months since the injury. I could not even walk 1 week after it happened so I would say I am doing a lot better since I can walk for 20 minutes on my treadmill now but I have so many limitations as to the things I can do. It interferes with my job. Sometimes I have to stand for many hours and it just kills. How long before I know that I am just going to be stuck with this pain unless I get more medical attention of some kind? What would a chiropractor do for something like this? I am afraid of the snapping and pushing on my body that has already caused me so much pain.

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