Stephen Coy’s back pain was so severe that he had to crawl out of bed and into the bathroom each morning to take a shower.
Coy, 51, twice visited Erie-area emergency rooms and twice he was given pain relievers, steroids and muscle relaxers. They did little to halt the nearly constant pain that shot down from his hip to his left leg.
“I was still trying to work, even though I really couldn’t walk,” said Coy, an Erie man who was employed as a tow truck driver and also drove a forklift. “I had to quit my tow truck job. Later, I had to stop driving the forklift and my employer put me on short-term disability.”
Desperate for relief, Coy went to his primary care physician, who eventually sent him for diagnostic scans. They revealed a nearly half-inch cyst on his lower spine.
Cysts are not as common of a cause for severe spinal pain as a slipped disc, but they can create significant issues, said Dr. Alejandro Matos Cruz, a Saint Vincent Hospital neurosurgeon who treated Coy.
“It can compress on descending nerve roots and cause a lot of problems for the patient, including severe pain, weakness and numbness,” Matos Cruz said.