Moving Forward from Back Pain

Three years ago, Tyler Pickering noticed if he stood for very long at all, pain shot down his leg and into his foot. “I couldn’t stand for more than a few minutes,” says the 34-year-old Saltillo resident. “If I sat down or walked around, I’d get some relief. But it got progressively worse and then sitting or walking around didn’t help.”

Tyler has always done a lot of bending and lifting– he was in the military and worked as a mechanic and also in an oil field—so sitting still is not an option. After dealing with the pain for a few years, he sought help.

He tried pain relief therapy with a TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation) unit with no luck. Then he saw a pain management specialist twice for injections but never got more than a few days of relief.

In November 2023, he saw a neurosurgeon with North Mississippi Neurosurgical Services and learned that he had a stress fracture in his back. Because the bones were broken, they were slipping and causing a pinched nerve. 

Tyler had surgery to straighten the bones, and screws and rods helped keep them in place while they healed.

For Tyler, relief came almost immediately after surgery. “I could tell a difference a few days later,” he says. “By the end of that week, I was able to start Christmas shopping. Within a few weeks, I felt a lot better. Now I can do just about anything I want.”