Hello fellow patients, I am very happy that the number of my suffering sessions has finally reached more than 10. I think it is time to communicate with you all. I have always wanted to say to my fellow patients that I feel your pain. Why? Because just 7 years ago, I became a patient of a herniated disc myself. How many days and nights of unbearable pain, how many sleepless nights, how many hopes and disappointments in seeking medical treatment, and how many anxieties and despairs caused by pain. I have personally experienced the pain that every patient experiences, so I understand more deeply what the patient needs. I think this is probably an asset for a doctor, too. More importantly, I have since changed the direction of my research and embarked on a path to remove pain for the people. I think I can tell you in a family way how I got sick and how I got into the pain management business. I would like to show you the journey of the most common pain patient and pain doctor, and find some common resonance with you. In addition, in order for you to get some useful information from my words, I will add some professional and easy-to-understand comments to my story, hoping to make my friends who read these words benefit from them a little. In 2003, I graduated from the Department of Anesthesia of the Second Military Medical University of the People’s Liberation Army and became an anesthesiologist after graduation. In the specialty of anesthesia, there are two highest pursuits, one is liver transplant anesthesia and the other is cardiac anesthesia. With the yearning for cardiac anesthesia, in 2005, I came from the army profession and worked in the First Affiliated Hospital of Tsinghua University, which was headed by Professor Wu Qingyu, a nationally renowned cardiologist. Luckily, thanks to the training of the leadership, I was able to enter the cardiac operating room as I wished and started my cardiac anesthesia study. I cherished this learning opportunity, so I worked extra hard. I put 120% of my energy into my work, knowing that everyone in the cardiac center is a “desperate man”. I thought I had finally found a direction I liked to develop. However, soon after, the disease broke my life. In the summer of 2005, I didn’t have a car at that time. I was riding my bike with two bottles of good wine on my back, ready to welcome a few friends to my home for a party. When the chain fell off, I got off the bike and bent down to check it, and suddenly felt a sharp pain in my lower back and a radiating pain in my left leg, making it almost impossible to walk. (Sprains of the lower back are very common triggers, and this is what triggers many of my patients’ friends. The pressure on the disc is at its highest when the leg is straight, weight bearing, and bending, so it is at this time that the disc is most likely to be damaged. (Other factors that predispose me to disc herniation are: the intense training I received at the military academy, especially since I was an amateur sparring athlete, the intense weight-bearing training, and the high-intensity twisting force training, all prematurely damaged my disc’s annulus fibrosus to a fine degree, before which my disc had already undergone a subtle underlying lesion.) After the first back sprain, I gritted my teeth and went back to work instead of resting so as not to miss work. Two months later, I started to feel pain in my left side of my lower back and hip, and my left hip was sore and radiating to my left calf like a series of electricity. The pain gradually increased, especially after walking a few hundred meters, it was like a burning pain, which was unbearable, so I had to stop, bend down and rest, and then continue to walk after a slight relief. At that time I was studying at Concordia Hospital, and I had difficulty walking out of the Concordia Hospital gate to the tram stop across the street. —- This is called intermittent claudication. Also, when I was lying down flat, my left leg would start to have severe pain as soon as I raised it slightly, with the straight leg raised at an angle of about 20 degrees. I was not a pain specialist at the time, but such typical symptoms made me realize at once that —- I had a herniated disc. (I made the mistake that many patients have made, which is not taking care of my body in general. I should have chosen to rest in the initial stages, but like most workaholics, I chose to work with illness. I would say that this is very harmful. No matter what the disease is, do not ignore it. The initial stage of a disease is like a small anthill on the base of a building. Although it may seem insignificant now, leaving it unattended may lead to the collapse of the building in the future. Workaholics, if you’re reading my words, please start paying attention to your health! Then there are my symptoms, which are very typical of a herniated disc. Unilateral radiating lower extremity pain of a burning, electric shock, pins and needles nature. There is significant pressure at the sciatic nerve point in the hip and there is intermittent claudication and a positive straight leg raise test. (If you also happen to be a patient, you can check for yourself, how similar are the symptoms to mine?) —- to be continued