Sciatic nerve / Bulging Disk- recovery Questions

Hi guys,
Oh i thought i am alone in this world with sciatica its sad to see healthy young people suffering from this.
when i was 27 i tried to lift some laundary and it started my story. 3 years i struggled with back pain but didnt suffer that much.
but 6 months back it was all bad, when i wake up in the morning i coudnt walk i had a foot drop man i cried screamed used a stick to walk.
i had bluging disks in L4/L5 and L5/S1. Doctor gave me an epido steroid injection but didnt work. after 1 months of suffering+phisopthraphy i was able to walk again. then i took aurvedic medicine plus 2nd epido injection after 2 months. my foot drop improved and i was able walk with little pain. i thought everything is okay and im normal but after 6 months back when i put on my shoe it strucked again this time no foot drop but shooting pain left calf+thigh+butt. i was admitted to the hospital and MRI was tacken.
L4/L5 bulge compresses one of my nerve roots and i get numbness on calf and half strength on my left big toe. Doctor said i need a surgery and asked me to decide. i am scared of spinal surgeries :'( doctor asked me to swim as much as i can and walk.
please tell me what else i can do to avid a surgery i am tacking pain killers now.
gud luck guys my only wish is nobody in this world get this stupid sciatica..

I am 34 years old and was an active gym participant. At the end of October 2009, I was working out and doing low back exercises. I was fine until I got home and felt a little sore. I felt I had pulled or strained a muscle so I did not go to the gym the next day. I returned to the gym 2 days later and continued my workouts. The next week I was in pain so I decided to stop. Two weeks went by before I sought out a chiropractor.

The chiro checked me and since I had some numbness down my leg, he said I had a pinched nerve. He gave me an adjustment which fixed the problem temporarily. The next weekend I was back in his office for another adjustment. This seemed to correct the problem but by the next monday I could barely walk. He a gave me a third adjustment and it did not help very much. By the next weekend, I was on the floor. I could not walk, sit, or drive. I had to eat my meals face down on the living room floor. I hobbled in to an ortho surgeon and his first offer was surgery. He sent me for an MRI which showed a herniated L4 and L5/S1 disk.

I did not want to do surgery, so he doped me up with hydrocodone and sent me home for 2 weeks bed rest. I then began physical therapy which helped reduce the pain and allow me to continue life at about 80 percent.

I am now out of therapy but still having pain in the mornings where I take 2 ibuprofen. I can not bend over at the hip and have trouble putting my right shoe on. I still have numbness down the right outside of my leg and outside of right foot. I want to be able to walk a decent distance and work out again but am scared to aggravate my pinched nerve.

Does anyone have any exercise recommendations, such as swimming? I do stretch as I did in therapy but wish to get back into my pre-injury condition.

Please advise,

Thanks

I'm 20, and have been out of work for a year now. someone spilt coffee on the stairs at the hospital I work in and I slipped straight onto my back, rupturing 4 discs, damaging the facet joints, siatica etc. I could hardly walk for 4 months. I went through physio, Hydrotherapy, rehab. Then I had an epidural injection which didnt work. I recently had 3 day procedures, 2 of which were lots of different injections and the last was burning off my nerve endings (which I woke up in the middle of) not fun.

Anyway, through all of this, and alot of stress and pain, I am slowly getting stronger. I have 8% permanent damage so I won't ever be the same as what I was, which isnt fun when your only 20 and want to do alot of things with your life. I know this may not be for guys, but I just started Yoga, just light classes and my posture is better, I am starting to feel stronger every day, not only that, it really calms me and puts me in the best frame of mind I have been in for a long time. That combined with doing a few laps in the pool when I can and even just walking back and forth in shallow water is a good form of light exercise. All I can say to anyone is stretch stretch stretch, and maybe invest in a yoga book for back pain.

Goodluck
Carmen

I am a 25 yr old male with a bulging disc at L5-L4, along with spinal stenosis at that level. Injury happened initially on 10/9/09 from leaning over for too long at work, and then again on 12/15/10 from picking something up off the ground...so I am 3 months post my most previous injury and improving every week. Still not able to get into the gym, and still have days with pain, but slowly improving.

I bought an inversion table about 2 weeks ago and I would recommend it to anyone with a disc injury. I have been doing it almost everyday for and always feel immediate relief. It is not a magical cure, but it definetly helps. I have found that reclining about 45 degrees past parallel for a minute a few times a day gives me the most relief. Anything farther hurts my knees and sometimes is too much for my back.

Good luck to everyone.

This forum is very helpful. Same here and still under PT for another 5 sessions and it helped me much, aside from 30-min breeze walk with breaks in between. Now I can walk & can wear my socks more faster but bending, lifting heavy object are strictly prohibited. My both legs are raised up whenever I sleep in a very firm mattress which helped relaxed & reduce the pain in the affected spine and before I sleep I put hot pack gel on my back to continuously reduce the inflammation. Further, an every 8hr. intake of Vit. B12 for the nerve was also prescribed. Thanks to God despite pinching pains I can still work to support the family. :D

I would like to know where you got that herbal solution from so I can find details of it. How much % do you feel healed now? 100% fully recovered back to normal asif nothing ever have happened? I hope to find a way to reverse my prosterior disc bulge (not herinated) L4/L5 Lumber spinal canal stenosis (bulge is pressing on nerves to cause sciatica or in other words narrowing of spinal canal). So that i may one day join the Australian Defence Force.



My General Practitioner told me I will never join the army because i won't be able to withstand the army activities, no matter how many surgeries/treatments/solutions I try. :( what a bummer dude.



Since you've said to have passed army fitness testing I may have hope, please reply sgtpain.



Hope you reply....



-Starvation

The Garlic remedy made me vomit... omg.

I have had a bad back for eleven years but until recently manipulation by my doctor or chiropractor would sort out the problem. I have now been in pain for almost four weeks and nothing seems to help. My doctor tells me I have a bulging disc but hasn't referred me for an MRI even though I asked him to. He says if I do the stretches he gave me it will right itself in time. I want to know if that's true and how much time is he talking about. If anyone has experience of this please help me.

All I can say is the my General Practitioner told me I will never be able to join the army in my life. So he's practically injected the idea that it will never fully heal :(, but i don't believe that! K?



This thread need to be active again!

I am a 52 yr old male, always very active and always lifting way too much. I originally injured my back in my early twenties. The doctors wanted to do surgery but I decided to see a chiropractor instead. My back was fine, with only a few episodes over the next twenty five plus years. Then after a weekend of firefighter training, yard work, and carrying my wife into the house due to an ankle injury, I woke up with severe back spasms. This lasted for a couple of days, then I had nerve pain down the front of my right leg to my knee and just below.

I found a chiropractor and tried that for two weeks, the nerve pain stayed the same, and I started to loose mussel strength in my quads and knee, so much so that I fell a couple of times. This was a problem I needed to get resolved. My chiropractor scheduled me for a MRI and referred me to a neurosurgeon, the results of the MRI showed material around the nerve between L3/L4. The diagnosis was a possible tumor. I was given another MRI but the results were inconclusive. My doctor finally recommended a microdiscectomy in case the material around the nerve was from a bulging disc, if it was a tumor he would proceed to remove the tumor by doing a more invasive procedure that involves removing the entire disc and fusing L3/L4.

What was I to do, if it was a tumor I needed it to be removed. If it was a bulging disc, I may consider other options. Because they could not be sure I went ahead with the surgery. I went under the knife last Monday 6/14/10, arrived at 5:30 am, surgery at about 7:30, walked out of the hospital before noon. Yeah, it was a bulging disc and the procedure went very well. I stayed home Tuesday, went to a evening bar-b-q on Wednesday, and a all day industrial cook off with the fire department on Thursday (twelve hours on my feet). I probably should have avoided the Thursday event, but all is well. I went to a training class on Saturday, and I will be back at work on Monday, one week after the surgery. Of course I will be taking it very easy for a while.

As far as the nerve pain goes, it is still there, a little better at best. I feel my mussel strength improving and I understand it may take a while for the nerve to heal. I am glad I had the procedure, but wish I could have known it was a bulging disc before hand so I could have considered other options. I had gone 52 years without surgery and would have liked to have gone longer.

I've been suffering with my pain since 2000, getting to the point last year where it was almost impossible to do anything with out suffering electric shocks radiating down both legs. Shoes and socks could only be worn if my husband was around to assist me.

i have a large herniation at L4/5 and a medium herniation at L5/S1 with compression of the L5 nerve root.
Not wanting to opt for the surgery route, I had an epidural and nerve root block, which although in the first few weeks seemend to make no difference gradually gave me ease of pain although never pain free, just a manageable pain, and allowed me to visit a physio. Sadly 10 mnths on the effects are wearing off and the exercise from the physio failing to keep me realitivly free of pain and I today am having severe difficulties in walking again, and can't sneeze or cough without dire consequences pain wise. looks like I will need to visit the pain management guy again, or even the surgeon and opt for the op. I have heard of stories where people (a work colleagues son) have had the op, and just a mater of months later returning to jumping out of a plane (us military). Sigh I keep trying to kid myself that the pain is not so bad still, but my husband and friends can see through it and are urging me to do something before it gets real bad again. I can't do anything in the garden, not even collect a few weeds, not able to move for days afterwards, wearing any shoe with a heal also kills me for a week or two (dependng on how long I stand in them). Smaill nieces and nephews can not be hugged unless I am sitting down and they are passed to me, and then only if I am well supported and its only for a few minutes. Blast looks like I'm telling myself go do something about it agan then. trouble is busy time at work, current climate etc, don't want to take time of in the middle of a big project. Guess I just have to convince myself health is better then wealth, although both would be nice.

Hope none of us have to suffer more then we need to

Hi guys, i am a 22 year old girl and have severe scaitaic right leg pain from bulging discs (degenerate disc disease) i am on the waiting list for surgery as i have found nothing works for me. I am in pain 24/7 and some days i can only get up for about 5 minutes intervals. Its practically ruining my life hence why i am getting a disectomy. Can anyone inform me of any more things i can try, is there any nerve treatments out there???

Kristy 22yo

Hi All.

Wasn't in the service, but developed an L5 bulge from cattle ranching. I had a micro discectomy to remove the bulge pressuring the sciatic nerve. Surgery completely stopped the pain. If non-invasive procedures don't help, I recommend the aggressive approach. My surgeon also had a neurospecialst wire me up to make sure he didn't touch any nerves during surgery, my biggest concern. It was out patient surgery, and I was up and moving, although a bit slowly, the next day.

Well I'm a senior in high school. I'm in Civil Air Patrol (CAP).
I REALLY want to join the military.
I found, that this whole summer, I have not had very much back pain. I noticed, that the past few weeks of school, I have had back pain at least 2 times a week.
I think, what helps me a lot, is during the summer I was ALWAYS hydrating. But now, during school, I can rarely hydrate as much as I used to.

I wanted to join the Marine Corps.. But now, I don't that's going to happen...
So, I've been switching to, and looking more into the Air Force.. I want to go to college ROTC. I guess, can any of you help me into preparing myself into strengthening my back more, into being able to get commissioned as an officer? What kind of physical demands will I need to expect in Air Force ROTC? How demanding is it on your back? Every now and then, while standing at attention during drill for long periods of time, my right leg will go numb.. I know that's not good. If it's not too much, I can tough it out. I am extremely fit, I am in great shape. I run 3 miles every day, and I workout every 3 days. (Working out is just now being implemented into my schedule. lol.)

Hey guys,

I have a bulging disc on my right lower lumber L5 S1. It has been four months now, and an extremely tough journey physically and emotionally (as most of you would know). In the last month i have been experiencing sciatica. I get a rush of tingles down the right side of my whole leg down to my foot and numbness all the time every day. I have started clinical pilates to strengthen my back muscles but the disc is still hitting my nerve and i cant get rid of the numbness and tingling. Sometimes the muscles in my leg ache, like i have exhausted it. Which is impossible since i had to stop work, so i dont do much, but i try to stay active, do the stretches etc. I have been on anti-inflammentries (which im still on by the way), panadeine forte and vallium!!!! Back pain has gone (THANK GOD) but i cant get rid of the tingling sensation down my right leg. I am also a lot colder down my right side then my left. im assuming thats because of the poor circulation.

Dont know what to do....if i sit too long, i get up and the numbness and tingles are there, when i stand in one spot, when i walk....its getting ridiculous. People have told me swimming, i guess everyone's case is different and might as well give that a go too. Doctor rang up to check on me and she said that if i feel im not improving to see a back specialist! What more can they tell me.........i am soo over it, i want my life back, i want to be pain free and i want to be happy again. 25 yrs old and i have these issues from now, i need to fix this, 4 months is simply too much for a person to take.....i want to have the strength to carry children!!!!!

Please someone help me! Tips....anything