I’m cautiously optimistic that my sciatica is a thing of the past. It’s been about 7 weeks of deep tissue massage, chiropractic adjustments, electronic stimulation (the first few weeks) and area specific exercises. In those 7 weeks, we turned the condition around.
I don’t have a hint of pain, numbness or leg tingling. I’m able to move freely and pain-free. It’s a great feeling.
Preventing a Re-occurrence
It is my goal to continue to perform the exercises necessary to maintain the muscles that had become lax and contributed to my sciatic condition. You see, the condition didn’t “just happen” one day. Although the sciatic pain seemed to have occurred overnight and gave no prior warning, that wasn’t the case.
Like a jagged rock caught in a waterfall, my sciatic condition occurred over time. The jagged rock that finds itself embedded in a waterfall will eventually become smooth. The constant flow of water wears away the rough spots to leave a smooth rounded stone.
Mistake Colossal
According to Jim Rhon, “A few small errors repeated every day will lead to mistake colossal.” Well, sitting at the computer day after day combined with lack of physical activity contributed to my sciatic condition.
Certain muscles tightened to compensate for the weakening of other muscles. It continued for an extended period of time until I finally felt the pain and numbness.
I can’t say how long it took to get to the breaking point, but I’d say it was a few years in the making. Some years I was more active than others, but never enough to fully reverse the damage done.
Road to Recovery
The first two weeks were painful and I doubted that things would ever get better. By the end of week 3, I had a glimmer of hope. Now that it’s 7 weeks into the therapy, I’m down to one visit a week (soon to be released) and I feel great.
It was a long road, but considering it took years for the condition to develop, a few weeks of therapy is but a blink of an eye in comparison. One thing this experience has done is it has heightened my awareness of my posture, my activity level or lack thereof. I’ve discontinued the bad habits that caused my painful condition.
What Sciatica Taught Me
I feel very fortunate about the outcome of my sciatic condition. If you wake up one day with sciatic pain and cannot figure out how or why it occurred, there’s a good chance you did much to contribute to the condition.
I was fortunate enough to find a qualified chiropractor that believed in the total body approach instead of spinal manipulation only. My advice to you is to search long and hard to find the right health professional to resolve your sciatic issue. I wasted many months with a chiropractor that meant well, but didn’t employ the whole body wellness philosophy that I needed to get better.
Resolving a sciatica condition is a team effort but you’ve got to find the right coach.
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This is wonderful to know! I have Sciatica plus degenerative disc in my neck. I’ve been on pain meds for 6 years and all they do is dial the pain back, it never goes away. I know degn. disc is not the same as Sciatic but at least I can start on part of my problem. All my pain specialist wants to do is write a script. When I had insurance he would give me steriod injections in my neck and lower back. Sometimes it would work, sometimes not. Steriods are not good for you, and I can’t afford them now anyway.
The only things that offers relief is to put a TENS unit on my back and while it is on the pain is gone. However, as soon as I take it off, it comes back. I’ve not been able to afford a TENS either. The wires wear out very easily.
You’ve given me some hope Felicia. I took Yoga once in the beginning of my back pain and it helped; it just didn’t keep it up.
Keep up the good work younger sister…I’m following you.
Take Care,
Joni
Sorry to hear about the degenerated disc.
Doctors and prescriptions is the exact reason why I didn’t go to a traditional doctor for my sciatic condition. I didn’t think the problem was caused because of a lack of prescriptions so I didn’t think prescriptions were the answer.
Fortunately, my discs were all in good shape, so that made my recovery a little easier.
I’m wondering if deep muscle massage and retraining the muscles in the surrounding area would be helpful for your condition. While it won’t rebuild the degenerated disc, retraining the muscles might help to keep things aligned in a fashion to cause less pain.
There’s also the problem with inflammation too. I didn’t realize just how much inflammation affected my condition. I’d bet that you’ve got some inflammation going on in your neck too.
Now that things have improved, I perform my sciatic exercises daily as a preventive measure.
BTW, I believe you can keep up with the comments by clicking the comments RSS feed (I haven’t tried it myself, but I think it works).