Spine & Back Pain

Each ebook gathers 50 stories from people living with one specific spine problem. Some write about chronic back pain that never got a tidy explanation, or sciatica that travels down the leg and changes how they sit, drive and sleep. Others describe the day a scan named degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, an SI joint problem or a vertebral fracture, and what that word did to them. Running through all of it is the ordinary difficulty of explaining an invisible pain to a manager, a partner or a child.

Treatment stories sit alongside them. People describe what epidural steroid injections actually felt like, how they weighed laminectomy against artificial disc replacement, what keyhole and endoscopic surgery recovery looked like week by week, what regenerative disc therapy did or did not change, and what life has been like for those whose pain carried on after an operation. Partners and carers will find plenty here too. Every book downloads straight away as a PDF and an EPUB, so you can read on a phone at three in the morning.

Where to start

• Backbone: Chronic Back Pain Recovery Stories — start here if your pain has no clear cause
• Nerve of Steel: Sciatica Recovery Stories — for pain that runs down the leg
• Disc by Disc: Degenerative Disc Disease (DDD) Stories — for the weeks after a scan result
• The Shot That Helped: Epidural Injection Stories — what injections were like, honestly
• Open Channel: Spinal Stenosis Treatment Stories — for anyone weighing up an operation
• Second Chances: After Failed Back Surgery — when pain outlasted the surgery