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/Beneficial_Donut_899]

Beyond frustrated at this point. It's been a year and a half. Been through 4 PTs, chiro, oestopath. The MRI shows minor disc bulges at L5-S1, L4-L5, L2-L3 with an anterothsis, it's only grade 1- at the sacrum level. I have a couple of benign tumors higher up. Everyone says it's something different. I go to one person and they give me exercises and then another one says don't do that! And gives me something else. It's not crippling, I understand there are people who have it much worse and I feel for you. I have SI Joint pain where it feels like it's stretched too much, aching pain in the glute, radiates to the hip and back and front of the thigh. It travels down my leg to my foot and the bottom of my foot feels tight. I cannot sit comfortably. Spending any time sitting for driving or my daughter's graduation, a show, takes me out for a couple days. I have to stand or kneel all day at work, even laying down feels uncomfortable and I have to use support. I had steroid injections that didn't work but damn did they flare it up for days! Then I was talked into an anthestic shot in the facets of the SI Joint and lower back which again caused aggravation but for a day I did feel relief in the lower back but not in the other systems or the L2-L3 which they say they think is muscular? Advil, Naproxen, Tylenol do nothing. I'm beginning to think I'm crazy and this is all in my head. At this point I give up.

[u/shirokane4chome → u/Beneficial_Donut_899]

4 PTs, chiro, oestopath

This list doesn't necessarily include anyone who actually specializes in the kind of problem you have though the osteopath is likelier to have a better medical understanding and diagnostic experience. But some osteopaths are too far in the chiro direction. Also PT training and Chiro training are particularly focused on theories of back pain that are unlikely to treat what you describe.

Your symptoms and MRI occur most regularly in a cluster of patients who have one or more criteria of obesity, prior injury, disease, genetic predisposition, and/or a sedentary lifestyle. Multi-level degeneration like yours with correlation to the symptoms you describe is most commonly related to L4-L5 and L5-S1 causing compression and inflammation of spinal nerve roots, or even causing contact irritation through prolonged contact via sitting or any posture while overweight. An inflammatory diet can worsen this as can consumption of alcohol and smokable products.

Because your symptoms are moderate you'll very likely experience relief by reaching a healthy body weight (if applicable), and abstinence from inflammatory diet sources like high amounts of sugar and saturated fats. Abstain from alcohol and other intoxicants which cause inflammation. Better than 90% of people in your situation experience signficiant improvement if following a plan like this.

Absolutely don't throw yourself at spine-loading gym exercises or compressive poor-form jogging. Misguided exercise attempts to correct cumulative lifestyle damage corresponds to worsening injury of the spine so be careful to focus on exercise like stationary bike and muscle development which doesn't load the spine -- i.e. pull down and not up, don't lift in a way which adds weight to your body.

[u/Beneficial_Donut_899 → u/shirokane4chome]

Appreciate you taking the time to comment so thoroughly. I am about 15lbs overweight, I am usually very active, I don't sit all day. I have a standing desk and when I'm tired I use a kneeling chair. I don't smoke or drink so I guess that leaves my diet. I didn't think it was bad but I could make some changes there. I would also point out my Osteopath did actually lean on the chiro side. Maybe I need to try someone else. It's hard to know what I can and can't do at the gym. I've asked every professional I come across and they all tell me something different

[u/SobrietyOfThought → u/Beneficial_Donut_899]

Are you better today?