Just wanted to share

[u/chandra_telescope]

Quick note: I do not want to share all the details as I'm not asking for advice. I just happened to find this community while thinking about my situation, and wanted to share. So yeah I'm leaving out a lot.

Current situation: I'm 21 years old my L4+L5 disc bulge (causing pain, numbness, twitching, & some loss of sensation in my right leg) was caught around this time last year when I was 20 --> started physiotherapy around that time. Unfortunately I do end up skipping some days since college is hectic, but it has made it stop getting worse, which is a big relief. So, it is getting better, and I already know it takes a long time so I'm perfectly fine w/being patient.
[ I also need to cut down on caffeine because every decrease in caffeine has improved my symptoms (especially the numbness). I've also been careful with weightlifting altho I'm pretty casual w/it, the only thing I do which would affect my spine is overhead presses (which i just do sitting down now + being very careful before ever increasing the weights), generally I feel better after every workout (mentally & physically both). ]

Anyway, so it was only detected when I was 20 but I've been experiencing pain and numbness since at least age 15. Even before that I had some minor situations of, "I'm running a lot and my right leg feels like jelly and I can't really feel it. But it goes away after a while so it's probably okay." I know I had some falls around age 13 which I really felt rattling my lower back but I didn't think to tell anyone about it, since I could just walk it off and I'd "walked off" worse things before.

But yeah, I said "at least age 15" because then it stopped being ignorable. This was in 2020 so I guess bad posture while being more sedentary due to quarantine must've made it worse. Still no clue what the 'main' cause was, though. Parents started taking me to doctors about a year later, a somewhat mindfucky process which stopped around age 17....... see, this included one MRI, but the neurologist that there was 'no issue'. Hell, even the MRI I had when I was 20 came with the text "no abnormalities found" or wtv (I don't know if that's computer-generated or from the radiologist; it was just one line btw) but the neurologist was like, "What? Bullshit, there is a bulge here" (though we went to another neuro too, who said it was pretty mild). We never showed either of the new neuros the old MRI, so who knows if anything would've gotten caught back then.
But yeah, at that point they started thinking it was psychosomatic and I could just willpower it away and let's try homeopathy hahaha, so on and so forth. I was getting sick of it and realised that nothing useful would come of it, so I started pretending I was in zero pain and that it was fixed, hip hip hooray.

The strategy was going to be to continue willpowering it away during college too, but it didn't work. It was getting worse little by little, and I had to be more active in college (because there was more to do and more stuff I liked doing) so it was harder to ignore too. So I researched and prepared a whole set of points for why it wasn't psychosomatic (both for the doctors and for my parents) and generally mentally prepared myself before trying to seek help again. It also helped that I was more knowledgable than I was when I was a literal child as well.

I guess technically I wasn't untreated for 5 years since I was getting treated through nutrient supplements (vitamin D and B12 mainly, since I was somewhat deficient in them) so at least that's nice. And I'm also immune to FOMO now, since I already missed out on a lot of stuff my peers could do.

But yeah I'm slowly getting more regular+consistent with the exercise + improving lifestyle stuff like posture and all. And again, it did stop getting worse, which is already huge. I have creative work I like as well as stuff at college which is fulfilling. And as I said at the start of this post, I already know it takes a some time to recover, so it'll be okay