Sciatic Nerve Pain Blog

If you have documented scoliosis and a compressed disc-L4/5, you quite likely have sciatica–pinched nerve at the site of the disc compression–which is causing the pain you feel all the way to your foot. Have you been put on a physical therapy regimen for the compressed disc or fitted for a brace for the scoliosis? I had back pain like yours from about age 28; at age 38, they wanted to fuse my lower spine; I resisted until age 53–what a mistake. I now have permanent chronic pain, “failed back syndrome” and must take very strong pain meds daily. I can no longer function like an average, well person my age. What to say to the arrogant doctor who thinks you’re not old enough to have a lot of pain? “You’re fired!” Try going to a neurosurgeon, getting an MRI to see if there’s more going on (spinal stenosis, for example). Just because you’re young doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be taken seriously. Do you feel like being disabled the rest of your life because of what one jack-*** said to you? You MUST be your own health-care advocate!

I suffer from both, and have many more problems as you’ll discover later on. Chronic back pain is pain that does not go away, even on pain meds. It may drop from a level 8 to a 5 or 4, but you will always feel pain.

Sciatic pain is caused by a couple of things: 1) A narrowing of the faucet joint that pinches the nerves coming out of the vertebrae, and any bulging discs can cause it too. Even after 3 surgeries (all open back) My chronic back pain is worse than it was before the surgeries, and I am suspect to spasms and sciatic pain that at least reaches my knee, and if it is severe enough, will go all the way down to my feet.

The reason your surgeon is not doing anything is because surgery is the last resort, and it is only done when there is structural damage to the vertebra itself. Plus I saw some statistics that open back surgery has a 35-percent chance of working.

I cannot tell from your post whether you are seeing a pain management specialist. If you are (or if you are not) make sure that doctor is Board Certified as a pain management specialist.

I have run into 4 doctors claiming they specialize in Pain Management, but when I check their credentials online (I live in Florida) only a few doctors had gone through the courses and passed the test to earn the accreditation of Pain Management Specialist. You want to see one of them.

After they perform less intrusive procedures on you, and you do not improve, then the surgeons will take a serious look at you. Today, the surgeons can also perform less invasive surgery, such as an IDE, where they place a wire into the vertebrae and heat the disc. Some use ultrasound. However, cutting you is a last resort.

Read on and I will give you some history about my 3 back surgeries, where the 3rd one failed, and I became infected with MRSA.

Last week I was hospitalized with MRSA as it attacked my lungs and gave me Pneumonia.

After a motor vehicle accident in 1999, I suffered severely from bulging and torn discs, herniated discs, and compressed discs, and misalignment of my vertebrae, leaving my spine with structural damage.

My surgeon will not operate unless the vertebrae are in this structural instability (what I am saying is the vertebra are pushed severe enough to be out of position).

So in 1999 I had L4-S1 fused, with disc decompression done.

Last year, I started having severe pain to the point where I could not even get out of bed for 3 weeks. after some injections, I was able to work 3 more months until the same thing happened.

I had a neurosurgeon look at my MRI for a first opinion and he said surgery was needed as my L3 was pointing upwards, and that was crushing both sciatica nerves coming out of the L3-L4 vertebrae.

I first had to have surgery to remove the existing metal work at L4-S1. Then 3 weeks later I had another operation to fuse L3 to L4-S1, I was suffering greater pain than I was in before the surgery.

What happened was my discs that were decompressed are now bulging and are pinching nerves.

Also, some of the past procedures let MRSA into my back. I had to severe MRSA attacks. First one hit the wounds, and if they had reached close to the bone, the surgeon would have performed emergency surgery, removing the metalwork, leaving my back open, and I would have been placed in a hard body brace. That did not happen as they were able to reverse the course of the MRSA.

Then 10 days after I was released from the hospital, I was hit with a 105+ degree fever. The MRSA entered my blood stream and I became septic. My doctor said I was crashing in the ambulance, and was given 24 hours to live. Again I beat the odds and 10 days later, I came home.

And Two weeks ago after completing my first week of class, I again was hit with high fevers and was taken to the hospital. The MRI done a week prior showed what the radiologist called a reactive infection behind L3-L4. The doctors think that part of that ball of fluid broke off and MRSA infected my lungs.

So weigh the surgery options very carefully, and ask the surgeon what else they can do to fix your problems. And make sure that though all the you go minor non and minimally invasive treatments before thinking about the big open back surgery.

I will put a link to a doctor (mine) who also runs a research institute to come up with new ways other than open back surgery to correct or even fuse vertebrae through orthoscopic surgery.

http://southeasternspinecenter.com/