You often hear the line “when you meet one person with Parkinson’s, you’ve met one person with Parkinson’s” .  In other words every case is different.   For many however, issues with the spine seem to go together with PD.   I’ve had severe back pain since we took the land trip to Europe (Krakow, Prague, Vienna, Budapest) 3 years ago.

I’ve done PT and injections and no relief.  So I had surgery on L2-L3 July 2016.  The doctor debated about L4-L5 but opted not to do it and of course he did half the surgery and I had half the result.  I spent the summer of 2017 in constant pain, I had four injections in four different spots and I liked this doctor a lot better than the one the previous summer but still no relief.  I worked with John Mayer, a neuro physical therapist and he helped strength but towards the end of our time together we realized I was losing endurance.    Winter 2018 started out ok but got worse as time went on although I tried to keep to my routines.    Actually the problem in early 2018 was that the medicines were causing dyskinesia (uncontrollable movement) and that was exhausting me.

When we returned to Corning in Spring 2018, I saw Dr Barabano and he added Amantadine to my meds.   While there are some potential side effect problems to watch for but otherwise it’s been a miracle drug.  The dyskinesis is gone but the back pain remained.  I decided to try PT again but John left and Abby took his place and she is great.   She’s said my main problem is tightness in the hip flexors and we’re working om exercises to fix that but also I went to a masseuse that David Kartzman (chiropractor) recommended.  I don’t know what Renee did but after the massage on June 19 I’ve been feeling a lot better.  I still wake up in significant pain but it goes away usually by mid-morning and while I still have some Parkinson stiffness, overall I’ve been feeling pretty good.  I don’t know exactly what happened, but I’m just going to enjoy it.  I’m also going to keep up with the exercises to try to improve even more.