'My back pain is like Schrödinger’s cat — it's both there and not there until I try to move!' You might have encountered numerous back pain jokes, but a lumbar strain is not funny when you experience one. Many people are bothered by chronic back pain that does not show any signs of subsiding. We may even blame it on calcium deficiency or wrong sitting posture. However, tumours on the backbone or spinal cord, too, could be the reason for constant back pain. An X-ray, MRI scan and lab tests could diagnose the disease. Tumours could appear both inside and outside the spinal cord. If there are lumps on the backbone, then the structure of the bones may expand or contract, leading to chronic back pain. You may also feel back pain when the tumours crush the nerves on the backbone.
If there are tumours on the backbone are cancerous, then the pain may be like this:
1) Begins slowly and gets severe with time
2) Pain would not subside even if you rest for a while. The pains get severe at night
3) Piercing pain in the upper and lower back.
Other symptoms
1) Weak muscles
2) Numbness
3) Ticklish feeling
4) Unable to feel hot or cold, especially on the legs
5) Unable to control urination
6) Sexual disorder
7) Difficulty walking
Around 97 per cent of tumours on the backbone spreads from other internal organs.
Diagnosis
Diagnosing spinal cord cancer is quite complex. If the doctor finds symptoms of spinal cord cancer, then he/she will order an imaging test for confirmation. These are some of the other tests:
1) Blood test
2) Spinal taps
3) Urine test
4) MRI scan
5) Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS)
6) Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT)
7) Angiography
8) Magnetencephalography
9) Tissue biopsy
