Alert to Artists: Painting is Hazardous to Your Health

A retired man came in for severe, persistent lower back pain. He had finished painting his basement and his wife asked him to paint the second floor.
Unfortunately, he fell off the ladder. He had slipped and fallen on his back. He got acupuncture treatment for one month including x-rays which showed L2 compression fracture. He has more pain when sitting down (which compresses the vertebrae compared to when he stands)

Thus, the patient had severe pain any time he was sitting down. Other specialists tried to give him steroid shots which were not successful.

After the failed shots, Doc referred the patient to a spine surgeon. The patient underwent vertebroplasty which is an procedure for stabilizing compression fractures in the spine. Bone cement is injected and the cement hardens, stabilizing and supporting the spine.

This kind of surgery will usually relieve the pain compared to all of these conservative treatments.

It was initially said to see that the couple could not fulfill their lifelong dream of traveling around the world together.  Fortunately, when I saw them the second time around when they came back to the office, the patient was almost pain free. And their trip around the world was just delayed by just a year.

I might think about being an orthopedic surgeon because the surgery literally changed the retiree's life around.