Pain in the Rear

This morning the doctor walked into the room, opened my chart, sat down and said, "Well the good news is that the bigger the herniation the less likely it is that you will need surgery."

Three months ago when all this started I had no idea the path it would take.  It started as a normal sciatica episode.  I thought I had gotten it under control as I was relatively pain free.  But then this weird twitch started in my calf.  Kind of like those muscle twitches you get near your eyes when you are tired except it went on for days.  Then my calf started to feel itchy, then painful, then numb. Also my hip/glut was getting increasingly painful.  I knew these weren't the same symptoms I usually felt but I kept doing what has always worked with no progress forward. In fact the more I did the more it hurt.

I remembered that in the end of October I was outside with our rowdy huskies and Diogi hit the back of my calf at full speed.  It had been snowing and then raining so the ground was slick and the impact threw my leg out from under me and I went down. It didn't hurt very much and normal life moved on.

One night I was massaging my sorest spot and I felt a lump.  Aaron checked and he felt it too. I had a massage (THANK YOU SO MUCH VICTORIA!!!) and she felt it too.  My grandmother and my brother-in-law both had leg pain and it turned out to be a tumor.  I didn't really think that was the case, but I knew it could be a possibility so when Ben had a doctors appointment the next week I had her check and she felt it too.  I told her my fear and rather than laugh it off she ordered an x-ray.  She said that it felt like a sac or balloon and was fairly certain it was not cancerous.  

Meanwhile I was becoming more and more incapacitated and as a mom of four, being out flat is not an option.  My biggest pain relief came from a visit to the chiropractor who adjusted my SI joint.  She said it was so out of whack she didn't know how I could sit straight.

Many physical therapy, chiropractic, and pain management appointments later ($25 co-pay each time...ouch!) and an x-ray and a MRI later and we have visual evidence that I have a large herniated disc at my L5 S1 disc and a bulge at L4 L5 disc.  The pain in my hip was from inflammation in conjunction with the nerve impingement.  

All I have to do is walk 20 minutes a day, some very simple core exercises, juice up on ibuprofen 3 times a day, not bend down and not lift more than 20 lbs and within a year I should be in the clear. If the ibuprofen doesn't continue to work I could need a cortisone shot, but for now we are holding off.  Of course the bad news is that I could damage it more, end up with loss of control of my lower limbs and my bowels and I will need surgery.  I don't plan on getting to that phase. I have had a lot of success reducing the pain and a moderate reducing the amount tingling and numbness in my leg and foot 

The worst part of all this is the knowledge I have gotten through the whole process.  Our money is really tight because of a change in our mortgage payment.  When I very first suspected the fall had caused some damage I tried to fix the problem by myself to save the $25 co-pay at the chiropractors.  All I did was further damage and rack up hundreds of dollars in co-pays.  Live and learn I guess. Thankfully I do not have a tumor or a cyst.  And in a way I am glad to know that it was a trauma not poor posture or misuse that caused the problem, though it certainly aggravates the problem.

There.  That is the whole story more or less.  I haven't told a lot of people what was going on because I didn't really know and I didn't want to have to "untell" a bunch of people.  All is well.  Onward and upward.