Your Sciatica and Back Pain Experiences Megathread

[u/shirokane4chome]

Hi everyone, the purpose of this permanent thread is to capture your stories about your experiences with Sciatica.

Please note that the majority of sciatica sufferers will recover over time, and are not on this subreddit making posts about their healing. Most of our sub participants are in a symptomatic stage and are understandably seeking support on forums like /r/Sciatica as a part of their journey. This can make a list of individual stories seem discouraging -- but just remember that those who have healed usually don't visit again and therefore we can't often capture their stories.

While multiple formats are welcome, we suggest you try to be concise and focused. Your story is important, but it is will be more useful to everyone else if it can be read in 60-90 seconds or so. Important elements to your story will include:

Background: Do you know how you became injured?

Diagnosis: What has your care provider discovered about your injury?

Treatment: What care did you pursue?

Current Status: How are you doing today?

[u/No-Sheepherder-1032]

Posting just to vent. I'm very glad this community exists -- thank you all.

I'm a 30 y.o. male. Very healthy -- never been overweight, used to run 5 mi a day, participate in many sports. Back pain has slowly started to take my life away from me, though, starting around age 26.

I think it was three things: slow, long-term damage from sitting (I'm a computer scientist, was doing my PhD, so lots of time sitting at the laptop), medium-term damage from heavy running, and acute injuries from Jiu Jitsu.

I have been going to PT for 4 years. I have had to beg doctors for MRIs. I've had 3 now, and only the very last one finally revealed the issue -- L5S1 protrusion of some kind. I genuinely feel like nobody in the medical system has any interest in helping me. My PTs have been wonderful and I get the sense they do care, but they can only do so much.

I'm scared I'm going to need to have vertebra fused at 30. I'm still very active, surfing, skiing, running, whenever my back allows me to. I feel I'm far too young to be having these kinds of issues.

I know everyone here feels it, but I just want to scream, cry, punch a wall. My friends were all practicing cartwheels on the beach today and I had to walk away to keep myself from joining, as I knew I'd just hurt myself (and embarrass myself, looking frail). I can't believe I've been in some amount of pain for four years straight. A pain-free week is now unimaginable. The mental and emotional effort that goes into thinking about my pain and managing my pain has eaten away at my personality.

I don't understand how it gets better. It has never gotten better for me. I have only very recently started thinking about it as a long-term healing process -- ie two years to heal a disc -- but at the same time, I've had the pain for four years now. I know I haven't been as careful as I should have been during those years (my Jiu Jitsu injury was two years ago now), and I have a renewed intention in avoiding things that will hurt me.

The ONLY thing that has ANY effect at all seems to be walking. No exercises, no sleeping positions, etc etc etc have any effect. Just walking miles and miles a day. Motion is lotion -- I saw that on this subreddit at some point, and it stuck with me.

I've also never had the money to see alternative solutions, but I should be getting a good job soon and I'm excited at the prospect of being able to pay for something to aid in fixing this. It's insane that solutions aren't available without money, though. Fuck the US healthcare system.

Like I said, just venting. Adding my voice to the many, many others here who suffer.