My Worst Sciatica Ever!
Sunday, October 29th, 2006Feb 2007:
Hurrah! My back has finally settled down. The final piece of the puzzle was a 3 day refresher Vipassana meditation retreat. Ironically I’d forgotten about the benefits of the 10 day retreat I did in 2004 which really sorted out my back and let me ride a motorbike in comfort again.
Vipassana has nothing to do with backs per se, it’s just a fortunate side effect for me of doing the retreats. Best of all they are free! Even food and accomodation is free. You just make a donation at the end of the course if you want to of any amount you choose.
Sounds too good to be true, but it isn’t. It’s completely non-demoninational,so it doesn’t matter what religion, if any, you practice.
Go to www.dhamma.org to find out about Vipassana and if thereis a center near you.
Jan 14 2007:
Making good progress, but not quite right. My endurance is still down and I can’t cycle much further than about 8 miles before my back says enough!
Lessons so far:
1. If what used to work or what “always works” isn’t working, stop it and try something different. That seems obvious, but I was accustomed to chiropractic adjustments and (fairly hard) exercise sorting out my back. It took a while for me to realise it was sending me backwards in this case.
2. Don’t be stubborn like me. Give up your pre-conceptions and get different advice. It took me until the start of week 6 to get a second opinion beyond my chiropractor, prompted by a friend told me to give up my “religion” about not trusting conventional medicine.
So I went to see the GP. I passed all the standard sciatica tests with no problem - reflexes, bend, touch your toes, stretch your hamstring etc. I did get a presciption for anti-inflammatories and these helped immediately, because by then my core spine was mostly fine, but the pain from the stiffness and irritation in the nerves and muscles around my right hip were driving me nuts.
(I had to give up the anti-inflammatories after a week because of side effects, but their benefits seemed to have worn off by then anyway).
The General Practitioner (doctor) sent me for x-rays as a precautionary measure. These came back showing a few minor abnormalities, but these were well within the range of normal wear and tear for a 50+ year old. The comments from the GP were “this happens a lot with backs and you just have to wait it out”. The GP also said backs are complicated and only specialists really know what’s going on inside them.
3. In the end, stopping and taking a rest helped a lot. The lesson is I don’t have to be superman. The world will still be there.
4. The last lesson is resisting the urge to try and go straight back to where I was physically. My chiropractor keeps telling me to take it easy, but the habit of pushing myself is hard to resist. Re-injuring is likey if an injured area doesn’t have chance to heal properly.
I learnt this lesson the hard way in my soccer playing days, but it seems I’ve forgotten it!
Dec 2 2006:
I see below that I started this post on Oct 29 with the comment “the last week has been the most painful of my life”. 5 weeks later I can amend that to “the last 6 weeks have been the most painful of my life!”
Given I’m accustomed to getting over most things in 2 or 3 days max, this has been unprecedented for me.
My wife said to me the other day “As someone who runs a website about sciatica and who thinks (or more accurately used to think) that diet, exercise and a bit of alternative medicine can fix anything, what are you going to say about all this?”
Have you ever noticed how wives have the unerring ability to ask the really awkward questions? 
I’ve continued the rest of this post below.
Oct 29 2006:
Well, the last week or so has been probably the most painful of my life! Just unbelievable.
It all started the weelend before last when I was helping my wife make a vegetable garden. Nothing huge, just a patch about 2 metres by 2 metres. The last 8 days of pain have dimmed my recollection somewhat (is that how childbirth works?), but this is how I remember things
There was an old stump of a medium to large bush in one part of the garden-to-be that needed to come out. It didn’t look that tough but it was highly resistant.
I dug around the roots a bit then tried to rock it backwards and forwards. It didn’t show any signs of moving, so then I got my 2 metre tall son to help.
Big Mistake #1
We grabbed an old, wooden railway sleeper to use as a battering ram. I had the scene from The Lord of the Rings in my mind - the one where the bad guys are battering down the gates of the castle.
So the 2 of us picked up the sleeper and began to batter. The stump happily rocked backwards and forwards and showed no signs of loosening up. My back was starting to twinge from the weight of the sleeper and the awkwardness of holding it on one hip and charging the stump.
Back to the drawing board, but first a few back rolls which normally loosens up my back, plus a few minutes spent lying on my back in the Alexander position (kness bent, feet flat on the floor, head on a book).
Big Mistake #2
Calm and reason was slipping away to be replaced by “I’ll show that b— stump” even though my back was already twinging.
So plan B was my son hacked away around the roots with a pick to loosen the roots. We also tried using the sleeper-battering ram in a different position, but my back immediately gave off strong warning signals at that. So I just rocked the stump backwards and forwards using my weight and legs to push backwards and forwards.
On and on it went - this was one tough stump. I think it took maybe 20-30 minutes to get it out. By this time my back was feeling a bit tender but I thought another quick lie down, then I’ll carry on (I’m tough after all!).
The result at the end of the day’s household duties was my back was wrecked and I knew it wasn’t just a routine bit of soreness - it was seriously upset.
The night in bed was disturbed, but the worst came in the morning when I tried to get out of bed. Basically I couldn’t move without these white-hot bolts of pain shooting down my leg, and all around my hips and lower back. It took me about 5 minutes to make it to the bathroom, which is only about 4 metres away from my bedroom door.
Once I got there, when I tried to sit down, I came as close to passing out as I can remember, since I knocked myself out iceskating 30 years ago. Just unbelievably intense, unrelenting pain with every movement.
So Monday morning off I went for a routine appointment (luckily it had already been scheduled) with my chiropractor aka “Brett the miracle back man”. He told me I had done an outstanding job of damaging my back - even better than crashing my motorbike, falling off a ladder and getting dumped in huge surf).
Fast Forward to 12 days later:
Setback#1
I had an overseas business trip to Singapore planned, requiring an 8 hour flight. Throughout the second week after the injury I thought there was no way I could make it (and Brett my chiropractor agreed). Then during the second weekend things really started to get better quickly as they usually do with me, so on the Monda we agreed I was Ok to fly.
Bad decision! The flight was late taking off, so I arrived at the hotel approx 2AM home time. The next morning I woke up really stiff again - I’d gone backwards noticeably. The stiffness and pain ebbed and flowed over the next 3 days, but walking around on the afternoon of the day I was due to fly back, the pain mostly disappeared.
I’d never realised before how great the absence of pain felt . . . but it didn’t last long!
There were a few rain showers going round Singapore that day and when it rains it Singapore it usually buckets down. So walking back to the hotel like everybody else, I ducking in and out of shopping arcades. I came out of the last arcade before the hotel with one small road left to cross, the rain still bucketing down.
I joogged across the road and as I reached the entrance to the hotel I lost my footing on on the wet marble and down I went. Just before the back of my head hit the marble I tought “oh hell, my back!” then I blacked out for a second.
Came to, realised that the water on the wet marble was soaking the back of my shirt and trousers and got to a kneeling position on one knee and stayed there for a couple of minutes collecting my thoughts and trying to work out what hurt the most!
The catch in all this was that the flight back home was that night, so my thoughts turned to how to deal with spending 8 hours in a cramped plane seat with a newly battered back.
And yes the flight back was hell, and the fall set the healing process back approx 2 weeks.
Setback #2
2 weeks later from my chiropractor’s point of view my spine was fine. However, my experience was that my right side and hip were still somewhere between aching and painful. The first 30-60 minutes after getting up each morning were still somewhere between painful and excrutiating as my right side was seized up after sleep.
So my chiropractor said on the Friday “you’re fine to go”. So off I went and exercised big time over the weekend. First a run, then a cycle and a swim on the Saturday. Next a 1 hour Qi Gong session on the Sunday morning. However, I couldn’t finish the Qi Gong, because the pain was just too intense, although it settled a bit down afterwards.
I turned up for the next adjustment on the Monday with a stiff sensation between my lower back and my right hip. We discussed that for a while and he did a full examination and adjustment of my hip as well as my lower spine. One particular adjustment felt like it had released the tightness between my spine and hip. So far so good.
Went home to pack for another flight and then about 2 hours after the adjustment - wham! Excrutiating pain kicked back in . . . oh no another flight coming up when I can’t sit down!
This lasted for 2 days before it cleared to “routine” vs awful pain.
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