[quote]ku2u wrote:
Also could the tenderness of the glute and sciatica be caused by the disc herniation as well?[/quote]
Doubtful. It may cause a loss in nerve velocity, but only if the disc material is actually touching the nerve root.
I’d get this book (as well as Dr. Sarno’s), apply the knowledge therein, and see if that doesn’t solve your problem before doing any surgery:
Is the disc protrusion even on the same side as your pain?
I have no idea which side the disc protrusion is on.
Here is what I’m experiencing:
My left leg has more pain/sciatica that the right leg. But my right glute is more tender and hurts more than my left. I don’t know if this helps but I went ahead and described it.
[quote]ku2u wrote:
I have no idea which side the disc protrusion is on.
Here is what I’m experiencing:
My left leg has more pain/sciatica that the right leg. But my right glute is more tender and hurts more than my left. I don’t know if this helps but I went ahead and described it.[/quote]
Yes, this sounds like piriformis syndrome on both sides of your body.
It’s extremely rare that a person has a nerve compression on both sides of their body from a disc protrusion, so it’s extremely unlikely that that is your problem.
You sound scared. That is the most likely source of your pain, which has manifested itself as piriformis syndrome.
Could you elaborate on what you said please. I don’t understand what you meant.
But I would rather have piriformis syndrome anyday than a disc herniation.
[quote]ku2u wrote:
You sound scared. That is the most likely source of your pain, which has manifested itself as piriformis syndrome.
Could you elaborate on what you said please. I don’t understand what you meant.
But I would rather have piriformis syndrome anyday than a disc herniation. [/quote]
I’m saying that your emotional state, especially your fear about your back problems, is probably the cause of and the perpetuation of your back pain. Read some of Dr. Sarno’s stuff and see if it doesn’t make sense to you.
I know it would be tough to evaluate me over the internet, but how sure are you that I have piriformis syndrome from the description of my symptoms? And could my pain be caused by anything else?
[quote]ku2u wrote:
I know it would be tough to evaluate me over the internet, but how sure are you that I have piriformis syndrome from the description of my symptoms? And could my pain be caused by anything else?[/quote]
I’m not a doctor, but I’ve dealt with this sort of thing before. The thing to do would be to follow my suggestions and see if they help. For the Dr. Sarno angle, find a doctor that thinks like him in your area by looking on Sarno’s website.
At the very worst, you won’t get better, but you also won’t have done any harm like back surgery potentially could.
My PT actually does Trigger Point therapy on my glutes, but I don’t know what makes him think that it wouldn’t be piriformis syndrome. I’ll just have to prove the research to him, and then we’ll see if he will change his mind.
But I agree with you, if my sciatica was caused by the disc herniation, I would have been healed by now. I’m 17 years old, and have done about 10 weeks of spinal decompression therapy, taken 2 ESI, done countless amount of traction. I sure hope I have piriformis syndrome, if I don’t then I don’t know what to do.
What has he done for you so far? It sounds like he’s done exactly nothing for you except scare you into thinking your problem is all in your spine. I would discard him as a moron, but that’s just me.
That’s what everybody tells me. Hopefully my neuro doctor will know what piriformis synrome is tomorrow.
You’re exactly right though, he’s done nothing but scare me into thinking my discs are still causing the sciatica.
After he gets through doing the trigger point therapy, my straight leg raise feels better and the sciatica isn’t as painful. But it is still there no matter what. Hopefully once I buy that book, it will have answers of what to do.
[quote]ku2u wrote:
That’s what everybody tells me. Hopefully my neuro doctor will know what piriformis synrome is tomorrow.
You’re exactly right though, he’s done nothing but scare me into thinking my discs are still causing the sciatica.
After he gets through doing the trigger point therapy, my straight leg raise feels better and the sciatica isn’t as painful. But it is still there no matter what. Hopefully once I buy that book, it will have answers of what to do.[/quote]
Read this one also:
i had siatica, blown discs, wedged disks, and was diagnosed with ddd. started as a pain in the glute - thought i pulled a muscle. didnt go away, eventually got worse and migrated down my leg into my knee and finally into my toes.
couldnt put on my own shoes for two years. went to work came home, layed on the ground on my back with knees up and feet on the couch. went from best shape of my life to worst. refused to go the surgery route.
started out with the pt and a ton of antiinflammatories. tons of stretching. wake up stretch, lunchtime stretch, come home stretch, stretch before bed. did a lot of ab exercise/core strengthening at first.
muscles got all jacked up compensating for one another. couldnt sit in the same position long at all. planerides were nightmares. been about 6 years since my injury - have rebuilt myself, had a few other injuries along the way that set me back.
my upper body is stronger than before. my lower body has been neglected out of fear of reinjury, i had mainly ran to combine cardio and legs. have just started doing squats with weight again - no problems - feel strong. havent had the siatica for years.
get dull pain in back now and then after heavy lifting or intesive work. this is my cue that i have not been stretching enough. it is my experience that this type of injury takes time to heal. its shitty but it took baby steps to get me back to normal.
i am older than you. my injury may have been more severe. cant stress the stretching enough - gotta be the right ones though. id give it a little more time, its gonna take patience.
Ok, my sciatica has gotten better. I talked to my neuro doctor about piriformis syndrome and he said that the sciatica is most likely caused by my L5-S1 disc.
On my straight leg raise, the only sciatica that I feel is down at my feet. It is no longer down the glute. I’m also almost able to touch the ground now.
So my neuro doctor is going to allow me to start jogging again. Maybe in a month depends on if I will be able to sprint again!
As far as working out, I’m still going to continue the bodyweight stuff, machine stuff, and the core stability. No weights still.
I took a recent MRI, and should be getting the results on Tuesday. We will see if the discs are still compressing the nerve roots.
My PT is having me ice the tender spots in my glutes to see if it will calm down the nerves. Both he and my Neuro doctor still say that it is the discs causing the sciatica.
What is the trigger point therapy supposed to do? My PT has been doing this on my glutes for quite a while and I don’t see much change? How else are you supposed to help piriformis syndrome?
Degenerative disc disease will never heal. Many people go through life with DDD without experiencing significant pain, but they sure as hell aren’t playing football with it. Personally I think you need to adjust your expectations; having DDD at three levels at such a young age is serious shit. I’m 25 and have it at two levels in my neck and am scared shitless.
[quote]belligerent wrote:
Degenerative disc disease will never heal. Many people go through life with DDD without experiencing significant pain, but they sure as hell aren’t playing football with it. Personally I think you need to adjust your expectations; having DDD at three levels at such a young age is serious shit. I’m 25 and have it at two levels in my neck and am scared shitless.[/quote]
No, they were wrong. I do not have degenerative disc disease. It did not say it in my most recent MRI.
My MRI results:
L5-S1 - There is a small central and paracentral disk protrusion with mild effacement of the anterior thecal sac.
L4-5 - There is a moderate to prominent central and paracentral disk herniation with effacement of the anterior thecal sac and nerve root displacement and probably nerve root compression, especially in the posterior lateral region. There is mild ligamentum flavum hypertrophy. There is no frank spinal stenosis. There is mild bilateral neural foraminal narrowing. On the left side, there appears to be some compression of the nerve roots. There is some extention of the disk infreriorly from the disk level.
L3-4 - There is a diffuse disk dessication and disk space narrowing. There is a mild broad based disk protrusion with mild effacement of the anterior thecal sac. No significant neural foraminal is seen.
I know that most of yall are not doctors, but it looks as if my L4-5 is the only problem that is causing the nerve irritation down the leg. This MRI was better than the last one for sure. But I now know that I for surely do not have piriformis syndrome. It is most likely my L4-L5 that is causing the sciatica.
My next plan is getting a microdiscectomy. Doubtful that I will be back for track season. It’s gonna suck not being able to workout for a while! Again!
I get the mircodiscectomy in two weeks. So I’m definitely going to miss track. They plan on shaving part of the L4-L5 and thats it. So I’m guessing they are just going to leave my L3-L4 and L5-S1 alone.
I still plan on playing football in college as a walkon. The thing is that there’s no doubt that the coaches will want me to squat. Even if I start slowly and work my way back up, is this even a risk worth taking?
I suppose the depends entirely on you. I would say that is probably not worth it unless you are God’s gift to the gridiron. Your story actually reminds me so much of me that I won’t get into the details of mine, but I missed my senior season as well due to serious back injury.
At the time I really wanted to come back and then to play at the college level. My head coach and a former coach (guys who had played professionally) sat me down and basically told me that it wasn’t worth it.
I thought that losing football was the worst thing that ever happened to me and it was pretty bad but at this point I am SO glad that I decided to be down with organized full contact football. My back is still messed up (I blame myself for getting lazy at this point) so who knows how bad it could have gotten if I’d put more wear on those discs.
In the long run it is up to you and your doctors. Football, being such a violent sport, is one where career ending and life altering injuries happen frequently to people who aren’t already hurt in some sort of way. Its amazing and was extremely important to me but to play football with a bad back is very serious risk, make sure it is worth it to you.