Pain! What Could it Be?

I had been noticing a pain in my butt since I finished treatment. At the time I was still recovering from the side effects of my surgery, loss of muscle tone and pain in my right hip. I had also been told about side effects of chemo and radiation. As far as I could tell, I had no side effects once the treatment ended, or so I thought. 
At first I would only experience pain when I sat on hard surfaces. Sitting was not too bad, but when I stood up there was pain. I was going on the assumption that this was related to my loss of muscle tone and I just needed to get back into shape and the problem would resolve itself. I mainly noticed the pain when I was sitting in the lunchroom at work; the chairs were folding metal chairs. The pain really didn't bother me at any other time at that point so I did not really worry about it. 
Once I was laid off, I spent a lot of my time on my computer looking for a job. My computer chair was well padded so I did not have any issues with the pain and I pretty much forgot about it. As the year went on, I began to notice that I was beginning to experience pain occasionally. I had just replaced my computer chair of 10 years with a new chair, sadly the old one broke. The new chair did not have as much padding as the old chair, so I began to add pillows or a folded blanket to make up for the padding. As the year was ending the pain of sitting in this chair was increasing. I began looking for another chair, this time with more padding.
Around March of 2012, I found a chair that was reasonably priced and had decent padding on the seat. I bought it for myself as a birthday present. To top it off, the chair was blue, my favorite color.

At first it was great, the chair was nice and padded and so comfortable. That did not last long, the pain was back, and it was getting worse. I began to do some research to try and find out what was wrong with me. I searched for my symptoms and would cross-check the results with cancer treatment. I knew that the pain was related to some aspect of my treatment, either the surgery or chemo/radiation. I finally found what I was looking for and it made sense. 
Coccydynia. That word is a mouthful!
Coccydynia, commonly called tailbone pain or coccyx pain, is a fairly rare and relatively poorly understood condition that can cause persistent pain at the very bottom of the spine. This part of the spine is the coccyx, or tailbone. Coccydynia is felt as a localized pain and will generally feel worse when sitting or with any activity that puts pressure on the bottom area of the spine. (spine-health.com)

Coccydynia symptoms may consist of one or all of the following:

• Pain that is markedly worse when sitting
• Local pain in the tailbone area that is worse when touched or when any pressure is placed on it
• Pain that is worse when moving from a sitting to standing position

I had found the cause of my pain and the reason for it was radiation. I had radiation to four points of my abdomen area, front, both sides and the back. Well I realized that the radiation point on my back was right at the coccyx. Radiation damages bone and cartilage.

The coccyx is at the very end of your spine. It seems so small to cause so much pain. When it is damaged, like mine is, it moves. So when I sit down, the coccyx bone will move either front or back which puts pressure on my spine and is painful. The worst pain comes when I stand up and the coccyx bone moves back into its original position. Now that pain is pretty bad!

This is an image of a coccyx bone that moves. Now that I knew what the problem was, I needed to find  a solution. The first thing I could do was to get a special cushion for coccydynia. 

This is similar to the one I bought. It has a cut out to take the pressure off the coccyx. I can tell you that it does help, but only for a little while. I can usually sit for a couple of hours before the pain becomes bad enough that I need to get up. Sometimes sitting with my back arched helps, but that puts pressure on my back muscles and causes them to hurt. I have my good days and my bad days. Sometimes the inflammation is so severe I need to lay on my side to take all pressure off the coccyx, and sometimes I can even feel pain while laying flat on my back.  The next solution would be to get a cortisone shot in my coccyx, I have personally never had a cortisone shot, but I have heard that they are pretty painful. Since I still don't have insurance, that is off the table for now. The final solution for coccydynia is surgery to remove the coccyx. Now that would be a last resort. For now I will try to make the cushion work and give my coccyx a break when I need it. 

I had thought that when I finished my treatment that I was done and there were no more surprises for me. Well learning that I had coccydynia became one of my surprises, but there was more to come......