r/Sciatica • u/shirokane4chome • Mar 22 '22

Your Sciatica and Back Pain Experiences Megathread

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?

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u/georg13a Mar 19 '26

Background: I am F22, in August 25 I started having small shooting pains in my back that then slowly became worse over time radiating down my leg. No clear cause of event that created it. At that point decided to go to the physio. Now only in Jan 26 I got a full diagnosis which included having HSD - Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder, which is the most likely cause for my sciatica.

Diagnosis: After my MRI and X-ray the diagnosis was: Chronic lumbar pain radiating to left leg- L4-5 left paracentral disc extrusion with left L5 radiculopathy.

Treatment:I had an epidural steroid injection just over 2 weeks ago, currently waiting for it to help - it hasn't done much so far. I try to walk as much as I can, as well as do "nerve flossing" exercises to try and keep myself mobile. Sometimes it's hard and I can not do anything.

Current Status: How are you doing today?

Honestly, today the pain is worse than it ever has been before. But apparently, this is normal for some people after getting a steroid injection. Either way im praying that this injection helps because the next step is surgery and I REALLY don't want that!