Hello. I am 19 years old, very tall and thin. My back is not very strong and i have decreased lumbar lordosis, which is starting to cause me some problems.
About two months ago, i bent down to pick something up and felt sharp pain in my lower back, which went away in about a day or two, leaving no other symptoms. Occasionally, when i moved a lot (dancing for example) my back would start to ache, but it would go away in a day or so.
Last month, after playing basketball vigorously, i woke up the next day with a sort of numbness in the sacral area of my back and the inside of my buttocks, right through the anus. I don't know how to define it, it wasn't anaesthesia, because i could still feel pinprick pain and light touch, but it felt weird.
Over the next two weeks, this symptom slowly took over the whole saddle area, starting with my anus, then the perineal area, the scrotum and finally my penis. This got me worried and i went to see a doctor, i got an MRI and it showed a small disc protusion in the L5-S1 and other several minuscule protusions of the other lumbar discs.
Pain is not the biggest issue in my case, as it is often quite manageable. What scares me is this sensory abnormality, the escalating hypoesthesia in my genitals and weird feelings in my bowel (the internal anal sphincter seems to be hypertonic, while the external harder to control than usual). I've also been constipated since the whole thing, being able to go to the toilet only once a week and left with a feeling of not emptying my bowel.
Feeling in my penis has evolved from mild hypoesthesia to near anaesthesia (parts of the skin barely respond to pinprick). My erections are weaker but they're there.
Can this slight disc protusion be causing all these symptoms? My neurologist doesn't quite know what to make of this. Could the disk have moved in the weeks following my MRI? I remember it's only these few weeks that I've started experiencing tingling/pins and needles in the sole of my feet. I had to lift some heavy woodblocks, but, while it hurt my back a bit, it went right away.
I'm very confused. I do not have diabetes, my blood tests are normal.
Here are some images from my MRI:
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/3666/mri1uu5.jpg
http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/764/mri2ko6.jpg
http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/5931/mri3ux0.jpg