Get's on your nerves! Sciatica.

[Timbo]

Not Uncle Albert this time, but he's probably the cause, Helping Dad up from the chair the other day and he decided he would just 'flop' all over and drop all 18 stone of his weight onto me because ...and I quote...he 'thought it would be funny'!  All of his weight went onto my one good arm and I heard a distinct 'crack' from my back. The brace I wear to support my shoulder after the stroke split. Having already had two discs removed I now can't get my own damned shoes and socks on...let alone cope with Uncle Albert. To make matters worse it appears I've nipped the sciatic nerve where the discs have been removed.

 

Now I'm not saying we are a bunch of old crocs but does anyone have any tips for relieving sciatica other than perching on my hot water bottle as I type?

[Hockham Admiral]

I had a major op on my sciatic nerve where it bifurcates at the bottom of the spine, Tim, about ten years ago. (It took 4.5 hours I was told....). Unfortunately it only worked for a year or so and the surgeon wouldn't operate again.. He wrote to the GP with his advice.

 

My GP prescribed Co-Dydramol tablets which I can take up to 8 per day... they do help a heck of a lot, I must say.  

[Poggymale]

Cold. Hot Cold and if you have only just done it then cold. Ibuprofen to take the inflammation down and although you probably don't feel like it - exercise. Walking, swimming and a few pelvic tilts - flat on back with knees up & feet on the floor & tilt pelvis. It needs to calm down - sitting one of the worst things possible. If you do sit on your bum muscles supported by a cushion further up your back than you think it needs to go - slouching dreadful. Please note not a old croc but have sympathy with anyone who suffers what is a debilitating predicament! Get better soon - we need your wit!

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[grendel]

the best advice I have ever had was on a lifting and handling course with the health and safety laboratory, that was that the best thing for any back pain is to keep mobile, and keep the back working, using pain killers to mask the pain if necessary, but keep using the back and the stronger the muscles the less likely the pain (and this from someone who  had been studying the back all his career).

for me when I get my regukar squeaky back it has always worked, a good session of digging down the allotment, while aching more at first generally clears the pain up for several weeks until I find that I have been sitting working without keeping up the excercise / allotment on a regular basis.

When you have a bad back its easy to say this, but not so easy to put into practice, due to the pain.

As for sciatic pain, I have experienced similar, driving to work by a certain route that involved sitting in queues of traffic for over an hour ( dropping the wife off on the way, and the clutch work gave me an excessive back pain (it was a different nerve than the sciatic). My wife gave up the job and a different route to work and the pain went away.

Heres hopig the pain subsides for you. I wake most mornings with back pain, but as I start moving it generally subsides. Socks and shoes - yes sometimes fun, socks I have to be sitting in a c hair and drag my leg up to cross my legs, then I can just reach, shoes, I slip my foot in then position 2 stairs up, then I can just reach, this is because I usually still havent reached full mobility by the time I am leaving the house.

Grendel

[SwanR]

Hope you're feeling better soon. Any chance of visiting a chiropractor? Mind you they can get expensive but I see one regularly and do feel it keeps me sorted out.

[JennyMorgan]

Gosh, there are some real old crocs on this forum, what with dodgy backs and knees. Perhaps we should have a dedicated thread! Makes me wonder just how many of us are actually fit enough to go boating!

[Brian J.]

I can second the hot and cold method.  Hot water bottle for 10 minutes and then an ice pack fo 10 minutes - repeated.

 

As said before, although it hurts like hell, excercise and not slouching.

 

It seems like a lot of people on this furum have suffered, and are suffering with back pain.

 

I think this could be an age related thing although I have had a "bad back" since my late twenties (nearly 50 years ago)!!!

[Timbo]

Thanks for the advice guys. Sitting on a packet of Birds Eye's best as I type. Will be nipping to Tesco for a cold pack once the dogs are walked. I suppose I feel as though I'm back at the beginning as this was the medical issue that prompted the operation that gave me the first stroke. Posture I admit is extremely poor.

 

It was being fit and healthy that did for me. Running....worst thing for you! Exercise...other than dog walking which feels like some form of Roman punishment, dragged asunder by two fat beagles, a labrador and an Alsawhip...has slipped of late. I seemed to improve healthwise when I paid regular visits to the gym. A little cycling, rowing but mostly weights. This followed by an hour in the steam room and sauna and a leisurely swim. Uncle Albert put paid to the gym with thirty plus missed phone calls every time I went. I'm afraid that the old buffer is going to have to learn to give it a rest, as if I'm knackered then so too will he be.

 

That's it then...as I type I realise I have to get healthy. As JM say's its a wonder I have the energy to go boating (sanding and varnishing). So here is the goal and challenge....fit by Christmas? I'm fifty on the first of January so that is the target to feel better instead of feeling and looking old. Don't get me wrong I don't mind the grey/white hair, its the looking more like Uncle Albert with every passing day. I suppose alarm bells should have started ringing when my Granddaughter approached me one day and asked if she could feel my belly. 

"Is it moving? Is it a baby rabbit?" she asked thinking I was pregnant.

Gee thanks Gracie!

 

So here is my mission and I have chosen to accept it. Fit by Fifty!

 

Step One: Stop Smoking, go to the GP and sort the back out!

 

Watch out for regular updates!

[BroadScot]

To numb the pain when my sciatic nerve snapped my GP gave me DF 118 tabs, which I believe are pure codiene. It works for a wee while. I did all the excercises Poggy mentions. Took me nine/ten weeks to be back to some normal movement again. 

 

I found resting on the floor helped also, but a bit of a bugger getting back up!

 

Wishing you a speedy recovery Tim.

 

 

Iain.

[Hockham Admiral]

So here is my mission and I have chosen to accept it. Fit by Fifty!

 

Step One: Stop Smoking, go to the GP and sort the back out!

 

Watch out for regular updates!

I said that four years ago, Tim..... Fit by Seventy.... the beers don't help too much but they sure deaden the pain!  

[Bound2Please]

To numb the pain when my sciatic nerve snapped my GP gave me DF 118 tabs, which I believe are pure codiene. It works for a wee while. I did all the excercises Poggy mentions. Took me nine/ten weeks to be back to some normal movement again. 

 

I found resting on the floor helped also, but a bit of a bugger getting back up!

 

Wishing you a speedy recovery Tim.

 

 

Iain.

 

I might add Iain no pain killers have touched my back pain in years now not even morphine............ but what does help not sure what its called is a massage/being walked on my back (not the wench as she is a tad heavy for that) but it does work for a few days.

 

Charlie

 

PS

 

Grace dunno if it would work with shoes on lol

[BroadScot]

I was lucky Charlie, an SFA physio did a course of manipulation on my side, or I would never have played cricket or golf again. BTW I was in more pain after he had done his thing....then it calmed down. Clever bloke he was.

 

 

Iain

[grendel]

a few years back, when my back was really bad, they prescribed tramadol (not far off morphine strength), just so I could move. now when I am at work, I have to remember to get up and move around a bit to stop my back seizing up.

I have finished todays excercises, weeding the allotment digging up my 2 rows of potatoes (with a net result of 4 salad potatoes) and clearing some of the new half allotment (skimming a layer with weeds off the surface) using an azada (imagine a sharpened shovel on the end of a longish shaft, at right angles to the shaft, used like a mattock or adze).

so my back has been excercised now (shame about my knees).

Grendel

[Gracie]

Charlie, if some one was to walk on your back with 6 inch stilettos on, back pain would be the least of your worries lol 

 

My husband get's a lot of pain in his ankle due to breaking it in a tournament a few years ago, his doctor prescribed Co-Codamol, they seem to do the trick, I took a couple once for a headache and I was spaced out for a week lol, stick with the Admiral's advice and drink beer you may still have the pain but you won't give a damn 

 

Grace

[BroadScot]

Co-codamol to me Grace are sweeties lol I went through 300 of them when I had a very bad attack of shingles, totaly useless. But they work well I know for many folks.

 

 

Iain.

[littlesprite]

With all due respect to Grendel and his exercise routine, if it's a trapped sciatic nerve then excessive movement is the last thing you need and working on the allotment would leave you permanently damaged. Pain killers can be good but again masking the pain can allow further damage of the nerve so take them but with due care. Voltarol (diclofenac) is very good for reducing any inflammation but is also expensive (Luckily I get mine on prescription)

Over time the back pain will also start to travel down the leg following the track of the nerve, don't despair this is normally a sign that things are clearing up.(could be 2 or 3 months) 

[lampini]

I used to get awful sciatica, which would keep me awake at night. Tried diclofenac (sp?) from the doc.. Limited success.. Then I started to get arthritis too and I really thought it was all over!

Then one night I was awake and googling my problems and I noticed lots of yanks were  getting some good results from an enzyme called Serrapeptase. I found some for sale through Amazon and thought I'd gamble a fiver and give it a go!

Two years later im pain and drug free, apart from a combo of Serrapeptase and 80pu vitamin D supplement daily. No nasty side effects and combined with swimming as many times per week as I can, I'm now fitter and more pain-free than I've been in about 15 years! 

I really never thought I'd be this pain-free again.. 

 

[Timbo]

So here's an update...

Back pain has eased off somewhat, still the odd twinge whenever I move sharply. The sciatic pain has moved down into the lower left ar glu buttock and down the left leg. I've tried to stay on my feet during the day and the pain has lessened considerably. The GP has also upped the dose of one of my regular medications that stops the tingling in my left side after the strokes. I've also added a couple of Ibuprofen to my meds in a morning, when the pain is at its worst.

Other changes I've made are to the amount of coffee I'm drinking and I've swapped the roll ups for vaping. So far so good. The pain has eased somewhat and I'm more mobile. The GP has also given me instruction that should Uncle Albert play silly b's when lifting etc I should just 'drop him', better still force him to use his zimmer frame properly. I have the old duffer today so we will see how that one goes!

[Bound2Please]

Charlie, if some one was to walk on your back with 6 inch stilettos on, back pain would be the least of your worries lol 

 

My husband get's a lot of pain in his ankle due to breaking it in a tournament a few years ago, his doctor prescribed Co-Codamol, they seem to do the trick, I took a couple once for a headache and I was spaced out for a week lol, stick with the Admiral's advice and drink beer you may still have the pain but you won't give a damn 

 

Grace

6inch stilettos sounds rather norty  Grace I'll take your word about least of my worries. Co codamol just do nothing these days. but that said they worked fine after my heart surgery for for the rib healing in 1997 ......... but for this dam back naaaaaaaaa

Mind was at the boat all day yesterday doing what i hope to be a water proof repair to from windows, crouching down certainly didnt do back no favours.........so with norty forts wonders if your stilettos might not take my mind off it.............................. runs for cover ......

 

Charlie

 

 

[Chelsea14Ian]

I feel better now I thought I had problems with my foot,and with back problems, but not as bad as you guys.Try the rib on the Thames,its kill or cure

 

Ian

[jillR]

I bought a garden kneeler for doing the weeding as i was having problems getting back up and

I have started using it round the house for low cupboards etc and find it brill.

in the garden I can just flip it over and have a seat to take a rest.

well worth having and it folds up to store out of the way.

http://www.careco.co.uk/item-p-dl15011/folding-garden-kneeler-and-bench.htm?gclid=CLKxwbzUu8cCFUI_GwodhrADOA

hope your feeling better

 

Edited August 22, 2015 by jill_R

[Hockham Admiral]

I've been meaning to buy one of these for ages, Jill, so thanks for the nudge!

I've just ordered one at

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Folding-Garden-Kneeler-Kneeling-Gardening/dp/B001TW5KLM

[Poggymale]

Good news re the sciatica easing a bit - be careful when getting in and out of the car - sit down & then swing legs round - nylon sheet or plastic bag good for this purpose. If you ever see a strange looking person doing exercises on a boat whilst it is moving give me a waive! Still hope to see you on the river one day! Regards Poggymale AKA @museumbroads

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[Poggymale]

Just to clarify I do the Twitter feed but I am in here as me!

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[BroadScot]

Ta for the clarification Poggy.

 

Iain.