So how many people here have ever had a case of sciatica? I had a really bad case 3 years ago and I am always afraid that it might come back. Nerve pain is excruciating and something you would not wish on your worst enemy. If you have had it, what were some things that you did to help alleviate the pain? If you have not had it, consider yourself very damn fortunate.
I thought it was chronic and could only be managed I have dreaded getting it for that reason Rocket River
I had a microdiscectomy back around 2003 for a ruptured disc/sciatica. Neurosurgeon said he usually waits a month or two to see if it fixes itself instead of jumping to surgery, but he said it looked so wild, he didn't think it would repair itself since it had completely ruptured or something. I decided to go to the NBA Summer Leagues out in Long Beach instead (since I had already bought tickets) so I told him I'd wait a month or so. I was walking around Long Beach like Quasimodo. There was maybe one position I could go to sleep that wasn't excruciating and getting out of bed was diabolically painful. I decided to have surgery after that as another scan didn't show any improvement. I told him the pain seems to be less though I was starting to drag one leg. He said "that's probably because that nerve is so irritated, it's dying" or something like that. After the surgery, he did say that the nerve was a crazy color he hadn't seen before - probably due to the irritation for the past few months I had walked around with it. After the surgery, the pain was fixed, but since I waited so long, the outside of that leg and 2 outer toes have a bit of numbness ever since. Had I done the surgery sooner, that may not have happened. He did say that surgery is a crapshoot especially with nerves, though. Some people come back 100% and others never recover feeling. Of all the pain I have felt in my life, outside of the Coogs losing to NC State in the '83 NCAA Championship in the Final Four, the sciatica and kidney stones were the worst pains I've ever had. Couldn't tell you which of the 2 was more painful. They both sucked, but the kidney stone "fixed itself" within a few days, I think. The sciatica, like I said - not so much.
Between this and the major surgeries thread you can see in real time how Clutchfans is aging People used to ask for help on how to talk to girls, or first time with escorts, now we're just a few years away from "favorite hearing aid? threads
had my L4/L5 microdiscectomy about 20 years ago, it was like magic--went in that morning, had the procedure, and when I walked out after lunch I was pain-free, no foot flopping, etc. I wouldn't hesitate to see a neurosurgeon. There's other things that can go wrong if you put it off.
you can use Apple AirPods 3 as hearing aids . . . true story https://hearingup.com/blog/how-to-turn-airpods-pro-3-into-hearing-aids-dr-cliff the future is now
Weird that you chose now to bring this up. I herniated a disk in my back about 10 years ago, and for about 2 months it totally destroyed my ability to walk. Super intense pain mostly in the joint of my hip, but every once in a while it would decided to extend down to my knee. I also had very bad pins and needles in my lower leg, and severely reduced sensory information from the flesh on that calf. At the time I decided to wait it out, and by the time I got around to seeing a doctor it was a fraction of what it started as so nothing was done. By about 4 months is was basically gone. Fast forward to this year, and I started having reoccurring, persistent very mild pain in my hip around March. I assumed I pulled something, but a couple of days ago it migrated down to my knee for a few hours, and it suddenly hit me that it is the exact same pain as when I herniated the disk, just about 1/20th as strong. I can walk around with a really minor limp that comes and goes, but I'm kind of freaking out about it for a fee days, and I've been trying to figure out the best sort of doctor to see for it. My understanding is as you get older it's often caused by stenosis (narrowing) of those nerve channels, and the thought of how that would be fixed through bone is giving me indigestion. I will second that the sciatica in my leg was the worst, most debilitating pain I've ever felt. I've been told that shingles is supposed to be terrible, but when I had an outbreak, it wasn't even in the same zip code in terms of pain. At it's worst, the pain was so bad that people were staring at me wherever I went, because I was basically hopping around on one leg and wincing with every hop. It was a pain so intense that I had actual nightmares about it.
