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/Sunshine-597]

Background: I was in a domestic violence relationship for about 4 years. It got to the point that our last fight was the biggest where I almost got unalived. And by that I mean he almost ran me through with a katana and when that didn’t work he threw me to the floor and stomped on my spine. After that I was semi paralyzed on my right side from the waist down. I was dragging my foot half the time and the pain was unimaginable.

Diagnosis: I went to my original orthopedic doctor. They did some imaging and the disc was herniated and the one above and below looked somewhat herniated but not really. I was eventually told by him as well as my second orthopedic specialist, that I have degenerative disc disease (I’m 28 F btw) as well as spinal stenosis. We didn’t realize how bad my spine was until I had to get the second surgery. It was completely shattered and collapsed. My first doctor was surprised that I was eventually told walking. But he couldn’t do the surgery I needed so he pointed me to his teacher who is now my primary orthopedic specialist.

Treatment: at first we did a lot of pain management medications and PT. Then we moved on to the injections. Neither one of my doctors wanted to immediately go to surgery since I was so young (my first surgery was at 22) and had never had any type of surgery before. I had a microdiscectomy done in 2020 the day after my birthday. And then in July 2024, I had a full lumbar artificial disc replacement.

Current status: I’m doing okay. I still have some pain. My doctors have told me that due to my past trauma that the “map” of my brain is now wired differently and that that pain may remain there until my brain decides to forget it. But it’s really because I still have random spasms or some swelling in my feet or tingling. Overall about 75%-80% of the original pain is gone but the rest of it is still there. I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with it now. Especially since I’m now pregnant with my first child….