(no subject)

[serinde]

Went to my primary care physician today in re: my Probably Sciatica; not because I thought he could do anything about it, he being an internal medicine dude, but to start the referral wagon in motion. I was expressing how this particular pain was different from my other injuries on that leg, and he said "how many had you had?" and I started recollecting them as best I could, but I thought I missed some. So here's me trying to get them all down. I might be missing some.

Winter, 1997: Both knees: Fell on 'em, hard, while ice skating. For the next year and change, when kneeling down, there would be a point of excruciating pain at one point in the bend, and then it would be okay on the other side of that point...at least until I stood up again. Eventually it went away, but my left knee remains occasionally arthritic.

January, 2003: Left groin muscle, torn at aikido. By someone's pants. Don't ask. Got better after 4-6 weeks, but never really recovered full flexibility.

Burning Man, 2004: Pinky toe: Smashed at Fight Club. I forget which foot it was, though, so maybe doesn't count.

Spring, 2006: Left knee: bursitis, or that's the best guess. Out for a couple weeks.

- strained both rotator cuffs in summer 2006, just to switch it up a little -
- late 2007, switched jobs; stopped going to aikido -
- early 2008, started running for exercise -

June 2008: Left knee, bone spur from running. Stopped hurting after a month or two of not running.

July 2009: Left foot, plantar fasciitis from running. Went away after a month or two of not running + ice + dork sock.

Spring 2010: Left ankle: chronic sprain from aikido injury + mosh pit + not letting it heal. Got better in about 10 weeks of dork boot + proper shoes.

Feb. 2011: Left pinky toe: broken on a cruise ship deck chair. Healed after about two months of dork boot, because wearing any shoe on that foot was excruciating.

And then there's the current whee, that seems to be of two parts comprised: something that feels muscular that started around January, and then the Maybe Sciatica which started after the Stanford trip last month but before I got my new bike.

Jeebus.

Comments

[dr_memory]

Something monstrously painful that might be sciatica? OH HAI! Welcome to my life, circa pretty much exactly this time last year. It suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. I was gobbling vicodin and flexeril for a month, and it basically did nothing but make me woozy and care a bit less about how awful I felt.

So here's what I found out during a long and excruciating process:

- there are two kinds of sciatica. One is "real" sciatica, in which a herniated spinal disc compresses the end of the sciatic nerve and BOOM ALL THE PAIN. The other one is "pseudosciatica", AKA "piriformis syndrome", in which the piriformis muscle, a tiny little thing buried in your upper leg, starts spasming. Said muscle is, unfortunately, on top of the sciatic nerve: BOOM ALL THE PAIN. The 'fake' sciatica is every bit as painful as the 'real' thing.

- If you have actual spinal sciatica, you are probably going to have to have surgery to repair the disc.

- ...but thankfully, you probably have pseudosciatica. And the treatment for pseudosciatica is physical therapy. You want a referral to a PT who specializes in sports injuries, and you want it now.

- There are a bunch of stretches that you can do to stretch out the piriformis and get it to stop twanging your nerve. Helpful people on youtube have recorded them for you. This one and this one and most especially this one pretty much saved my life: our family trip to Italy came right in the middle of this nightmare, and if I hadn't found those stretches they would have been pushing me around rome in a wheelchair.

- Your physical therapy will mostly be composed of exercising your glutes: the basic idea is to train the big muscles around the piriformis to do more of the work so that the piriformis can heal up in peace.

- Ironically, doing more time on the elliptical trainer actually helped me, and part of the reason I fucked myself up so badly was that I initially stopped doing it when the problems started. YMMV.

[serinde]

I did get my referral to a sports medicine clinic (though they can't see me til I'm back from Berkeley, wah). So that's in process and I too have of the flexeril to survive the plane trip.

...Imagine my stun to find that those videos are the pigeon series of yoga poses. I can do that. I'll start forthwith; thanks!

I had taken note that riding my bike to work does not trigger the pain. (I realize I didn't say it in the post, but this chiefly presents as increasingly worse and lightning-like pains down my leg if I've been sitting for more than an hour; say, in a long meeting, or on a bus to Baltimore.) I was unsure whether it might still aggravate the problem, though it sounds like for you it didn't.

[dr_memory]

I had taken note that riding my bike to work does not trigger the pain.

Yup. As I hazily understand it, the piriformis is an adductor: it's involved in moving the leg from side to side. Exercises that are strictly up-and-down like bicycling and elliptical training generally allow it to relax and let the bigger muscles do their thing.

(I realize I didn't say it in the post, but this chiefly presents as increasingly worse and lightning-like pains down my leg if I've been sitting for more than an hour; say, in a long meeting, or on a bus to Baltimore.)

Oh yeah, that's exactly the thing. Walking around was merely achey, but the moment I sat down everything went to shit: "lightning-like" was precisely how I described it to M. (Except I used a lot more profanity.)

Nerve pain is just shockingly awful, pun intended.