My butt! My leg! Chop it off at the hip!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m in the middle of an attack of sciatica. It really hurts. I’ve been trying to get past it with mega-doses of Aleve, tinier doses of Vicodin and, when things get really bad, washing all down with alcohol.

Don’t start with me! I know I shouldn’t be mixing Vodka and Vicodin. But this morning I got up, fell down, and was really, really, really tempted to start my day off with narcotics and a shot.

I didn’t do it, but I’m not sure how long I’m going to last. So, Teemsters, I’m asking for advice, home remedies and commiseration. Any wild-assed remedy will do. It couldn’t be any worse than what my doctor recommends, which is even stronger narcotics.
Please, commence with the whining, ancedotes and quackery. Thanks.

2

sounds painful, i’ll dispatch the waaaaambulance right away!

3

I’m with you, sister. I’ve only experienced sciatica in the mildest form and it’s enough to make you want to cry.

4

Has a specific cause been detected for your problem? It’s better to try to pinpoint and fix the cause of the problem than suppress the symptoms, if possible. This may require you to insist on seeing a specialist, if you haven’t already, or changing to another if you have.

If a specific cause cannot be determined, you could try chiropractic. It worked for my MIL when she had sciatica.

Acupuncture could help too, but some people don’t respond to it at all.

If you sleep mostly on your stomach or your back, sleeping on your side with your back straight may help too.

I hope you feel better soon. Spinal/nerve pain sux.

5

Poor Biggirl!

My mother-in-law gets these attacks and they are no fun! She has used oil of wintergreen in a tub, that helped, don’t use too much, also some herbal stuff. I did a search to see if I could find what she had taken, but nothing rang a bell. Here’s what I did find , Burdock Root and Ruta are apparently good for it.

This site claims to have a “pain resistance” therapy, based in martial arts. I don’t know how true their claims are, but I know I am considering them for possible migraine treatment.

http://www.prevention.com/healing/living/painresist.html

6

Well romansperson, my doctor thinks it’s Piriformis syndrome. I’ve got the butt pain, the toes pointed out thingy and it has flaired up because I’ve started walking again (I was up to 30 city blocks a day until 3 days ago.)

The chiro is my next stop, before stronger drugs.

And amati I freely admit that I’m whining. Because it huuurts and I want it to stoooop. Make it *stop huuurting[.i] Where’s my waaambulance?

7

Oh, if that’s the case, then I wonder if deep tissue massage might help. I get massages whenever I can afford it, and it was very surprising to me to find out exactly how tight my butt muscles were without my even noticing. It was incredibly relaxing to get the tension worked out. My massage therapist says that women tend to have more tension in the both butt muscles themselves and the muscles along the sides of the upper thigh.

Maybe a muscle relaxer could help too - something like Robaxin (there are others too - I’ve just used Robaxin for neck tension and spasm and it did help). Valium also works by relaxing muscles.

I don’t know if any of the newer pain relievers like Vioxx or Celebrex would work, but if there’s inflammation in the muscle, it could.

I hope you get rid of the pain in your ass very soon (sorry, I couldn’t resist)!

8

If I were a massage therapist I’d say the same thing :smiley:

9

This works for me personally (although it’s awhile since I’ve had it touch wood) keeping it warm, just with a blanket or hot water bottle (warm not roasting obviously!) That’s all I can think of Biggirl, hope it gets better soon.

10

Beelzebubba said:

Not if you saw my butt, you wouldn’t :D.
I give the lady plenty to work on, thankyouverymuch.

11

You’ve probably already done this, but there’s alot of stuff online about Piriformis syndrome and I’m bored and thought I would give you a hand :smiley:

12

Well, as I know first hand, the only reliable method for immediate relief of sciatica pain is a combination of three things:

  1. Bed Rest (supine, with the bad leg slightly elevated and the knee slightly bent)

  2. Anti-inflammatories (Aleve)

and

  1. Narcotic painkillers (Vicodin, Norco, or Oxycontin)

I can see your doctor has already provided you with this prescription. Just don’t be afraid to use the meds when you’re in pain… if you take them for pain, you won’t get addicted. (And I know, I don’t like taking mine before work, either. But after a few months you get used to it and the woozy side effects go away.)

If you’ve already mixed vicodin with alcohol and haven’t keeled over, then you’ve already eluded the vast majority of the risk. The remaining problem is that a vicodin tablet has 500 mg of tylenol. You want to limit your intake of tylenol. Ask your doctor for Norco instead, and then take half of that. Half a Norco has the same hydrocodone as one whole Vicodin, but has only about one third the tylenol. If you continue to mix any of these drugs with alcohol, have your physician do a “liver function test” every few months.

Now, as far as long term solutions, it depends on what is irritating your nerve. (Mine is a bulging disc between the L5 and S1 vertebrae, compressing the nerve root.) Your doctor should be advising you on this. You may need to have an MRI taken, and consult a specialist. Your non-drug options are few, though - surgery or physical therapy. Or both.

I actually found that double doses of Alleve (1000 mg every 12 hours) sustained for two weeks after acute pain was gone helped a lot to prevent chronic pain. (But then I got an ulcer from taking the Alleve without food.) Chiropracty didn’t do anything for me but give me neck pains.

I feel for you, Biggirl, I’ve been there. I hadn’t cried in 10 years, but when my sciatica hit the first time, I was on jury duty that week, and for a whole week the judge would not recess the trial so I could see my doctor. So I didn’t know what was wrong with me. By the end of the fourth day I’d had enough - I was weeping like a little girl.

(For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, sciatica pain radiates from your lower back, all the way down your leg. It sometimes starts as twinges, and then gets worse. Othertimes it just hits you full force. It can feel like someone’s yanking your achilles tendon out via your tailbone. Or it feels like fireballs shooting down your leg. Either of these can be associated with stabbing pains in the thigh and foot. Any movement of the leg magnifies these pains. And then, if there’s a back injury causing the sciatica, that can hurt too. Mine feels like someone is jamming a screwdriver between my vertebrae and prying.)

Then, after bawling my eyes out, I drank an entire bottle of scotch.

When I finally got to see my doctor, he asked me what I had been taking for the pain. I said “aspirin and scotch… lots of scotch.”

The doctor said, “That’s probably the best thing you could have done, without a prescription.” (This was just a few months before Aleve hit the OTC market.)

When I finally got home with that vicodin prescription, I had been in constant, sometimes blinding pain for 8 days. Man, when those meds kicked in, I was in bliss.

13

Your Post sounded just like what my mom (age 75) used to say when she got those attacks, before she got a couple of epidural blocks.
The first one worked great until she got bronchitis and coughed so hard that it messed it all up (hard to explain).
The second one worked equally well and she’s been sciatica-free for years.
I feel for you and I hope you can find a remedy. Perhaps you could ask your doc about an epidural block?

14

Jeez. I’ve only had it twice and now I know what I have to look forward to. It’s painful but not up there with the big pains discussed earlier (kidney and gall stones) and I realize I have only the beginning stages and in a rather mild form. I didn’t notice the toes thing (both times I was out walking) but the onset was a tingling in my left foot that within minutes shot up to my butt. Have 800mg Motrin that I use for RSI (carpal tunnel) and it has worked rather well for this too.

Thanks for all the info - hope something works for you and hope I don’t get any worse.

15

I had this over a year ago. Unbelievably painful.

I finally figured out how to get rid of it (in my case) I laid flat on the floor and raising the pained leg, took it way back over my head as far as it would go to the point of considerable pain. I even had my kids push on it to help it go back even farther than I could pull it. (Aaaaargggggh!)

After I stretched it out like this the nerve was re-aligned correctly and the pain shortly went away.

16

So sorry about the pain. The chiropractor really is a good idea. Mine helped me a lot after I was in a car accident. The stretching exorcise that astro suggested sounds good too. The only other suggestion I can give is that if you sleep on your side get a body pillow. I use one most of the time. You place some of it between your legs, and then I usually end upu hugging the other end. When my back acts up it feels great.

17

Thanks all for sharing in my pain.

I do have some stretches I can do, but when the pain is at it’s worse I can barely move, much less stretch. Deep muscle massage sounds like a great idea. Maybe I can get my husband to do it with the wintergreen oil.

I’ve been taking half the Vicodins because, well, I’m a chicken when it comes to narcotics. Sounds irrational, I know, since I’m not a too chicken to take the pill then have a drink.

As for bedrest. My own doctor is of the opinion that if I am able to get out of bed and walk around, I should.
The good thing is the acute pain usually only lasts for about a week or so. The lingering muscle twinges down my leg are so much easier to deal with than the stabbing, twisting weakness that signifies an acute attack.

Another question for my fellow sciatica sufferers. How long did it take you all to be diagnosed? The first time it happened to me, my doctor said I pulled a muscle. It was my insistance that this was no ordinary pulled muscle (after 4 days of pain) that could be causing the pain. What muscle goes from my butt all the way down to my big toe?

18

My doctor knew right away, from the symptoms I described to him. But I couldn’t get to see him for eight friggin days.

In fact, he even brought up a couple syptoms that I hadn’t told him about yet (pain during BMs, and numbness in the toes). I was actually quite impressed by his diagnosis. I am lucky to have found a competent, intelligent, and perceptive primary care doctor.

As for extreme stretching and chiropractic manipulation, CHECK WITH YOUR DOCTOR FIRST BEFORE ATTEMPTING THESE!

This is because Sciatica has many different “mechanical” causes. What works for one person will not necessarily work for others, and may make the problem worse. Chiropractic didn’t do much for me, although it didn’t hurt either. And when I’m in pain, stretching and exercise only irritates the nerve more.

If your sciatica is due to a slipped or bulging disc (like mine), then really, the only thing you can do is treat the inflammation and rest (i.e., stop annoying the nerve and give it a chance to heal). While you’re waiting for that to work, apply pain relief. I was offered steroid shots, but was also told they often cause more harm than good (I forget the details).

And I consulted a surgeon who specializes in disc surgery. He said that as long as I can manage the pain with meds, there was no reason to have surgery - it’s just too invasive and risky, and the recovery takes weeks, and the wound would be in a place that I can’t see or even reach very well.