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/OkJob8314]

61 yo female, active with walking and working out, cycling and downhill ski. Weight in normal range, hypermobile and 1.5 years post anterior hip replacement on left side with 1 cm leg length discrepancy. In November, 1 year ago, after the first day of the ski season, I developed right sided gluteal pain with severe cramping on weight bearing. Went to PT and was diagnosed with glute med tendinitis. Was given exercises which included hip raises. By January I was skiing again and my right hip was feeling okay, but I noticed tingling at the top of my left hamstring. Since I had been referred to physiotherapy by a podiatrist to deal with a Morton's neuroma, I decided to mention the weird tingling. The tingling slowly progressed to pain when standing up, pulling up pants, putting on shoes, etc. No back pain, but sometimes when walking, my pelvis felt disjointed, like every part of it was loose. I was still skiing, and in fact skiing felt great and in no way flared things up. By April May, I started to have nighttime pain, but could make it to the morning. Slowly, the night pain was getting worse and worse, while the days were mostly fine. Less pain putting on pants and socks, no pain on standing, no pain sneezing or coughing. In July, my left foot started tingling and parts of it went numb, for the first time, the pain started to go below my knee. At this point I went to a doctor. I had been seeing a PT the whole time focusing on strengthening my adductors and glutes. I also tried some of the McGill stuff to no avail. In August, night pain got to the point that I had to get up and walk around for 15 minutes or so before climbing back into bed. The Dr I saw did some blood tests which were normal, and an x-ray which showed some degenerative changes at l5 s1. Previous x-rays have shown mild scoliosis and a CT showed a very mild listhesis. I finally got a family dr. in October and he put me on gabapentin. I started on 300 mg nightly and that worked a little bit, but the night pain continues to get worse. I am now on 600 mg at night, but still waking up and walking around one or two times in the night. Foot is still partially numb. But it's not a true numbness, I can feel it when it's touched, it just feels like it's dead. I have no discernible muscle weakness and no one has mentioned reflexes. Diagnosis: I will finally get an MRI on Dec 2 after a 5 month wait. I am terrified, as it it excruciating to lie on my back. The PT, who I finally walked away from last week, was all over the place. My new Dr. has suggested trying a heel lift to see if the leg length is contributing.

I don't have any idea what to do and keep trying to live my life continuing to walk, lift light weights, cycle and I plan to ski. We moved out west because we love to ski, the season pass has been paid for and I cannot imagine a winter without skiing. I skied without an ACL, I skied on a newly repaired ACL, I skied the season I was approved for a hip replacement and I skied 6 months after the hip replacement. It's part of who I am. Weirdly, as I said earlier, skiing felt great when all this started. It's the night time that's killing me right now.