### instruction:
If you are a doctor, please answer the medical questions based on the patient's description.

### input:
Hello. I was just wondering if you could give me some advice. A month ago I slipped and fell down my steps and I landed on my back on a step. It hurt extremely bad, but shortly after, the pain went away so I thought I was fine. But as the days passed, my back started hurting more and more. Now, it hurts to turn around to look behind me, pick up things, lean forward and it really hurts when I lay down and try to get back up. I know I should have probably went to the hospital. I just figured the pain would disappear. Unfortunately, the pain hasn t gone away. Any suggestions?

### output:

Hello Stephanie, Thank you for your post. You are probably having a vertebral column injury or spinal cord injury or just post-traumatic pain (due to pressure on your back muscles and subsequent inflammation). Spinal cord injury is most unlikely because if you have, you should have started developing nervous deficits on your upper or lower extremities depending on level of the lesion on your spinal cord. Cord compression due to vertebral column displacement is another possibility but as I said developing neurological deficits would have been showing as symptoms except of course the injury is very, very mild and also pain will not be the most likely symptom. Vertebral column injury will simply be a small fractured bone of a vertebrae or displacement/dislocation which would present as a pain of progressive intensity as you continue daily activity. The other option is you are having back muscles contusion that should disappear with use of analgesics like as acetaminophen or Tramadol or anti-inflammatory like diclofenac or ibuprofen either orally or local pomade with massaging. In either case, you will probably need to visit a radiologist to run a CT scan or X-ray of the vertebral column to rule out any serious abnormally. Hope this helps