A Sciatica Success Story From Someone Who Was Told To "Manage It" For The Rest Of His Life

After 7 years of cortisone shots that lasted two weeks, physical therapy that never held, and gabapentin that only helped him sleep — one reply to a post he wrote at 3am finally explained what every doctor had missed.

Dear friend with Sciatica pain.

Let me first explain something important that your family and friends don't seem to understand about what is happening to you.

Sciatica is not just about the pain.

Although the pain is brutal. Sharp, unpredictable, exhausting but you and I know that it is the loneliness that cuts the deepest.

When you live with something like sciatica, people think they get it.

"Oh, I had that once!"

"I get backache too sometimes."

But they don't understand.

Not really.

Not when you've been dealing with it for months, even years.

Not when it hijacks your sleep, your mood, your sense of control.

Not when it quietly rewires your personality because you're always bracing for the next flare-up.

At first, friends check in.

They offer help.

But life moves on for them and you're still fighting what should be easy in life.

You stop mentioning the pain to others.

You feel like a burden.

You pretend you're okay when you're not, because chronic pain makes you fluent in small lies.

Even those who love you can't fully grasp it.

How could they?

You're still walking, still smiling through it all.

But behind the scenes, you're measuring every step, calculating whether sitting or standing will hurt less, wondering if this is your new normal.

And it changes you.

It chips away at who you were.

You become more withdrawn, more guarded.

You lose spontaneity.

You cancel plans that you would've loved to do a few years ago.

You watch as your world shrinks to the size of what your body can tolerate that day.

But here's the thing: you're still here.

Still trying.

Still showing up, even if no one sees how hard it is. And maybe that's the most quietly heroic thing of all.

To anyone reading this who gets it — I see you.

You're not imagining it.

You're not weak.

You're not alone.

Why I'm Writing This

I know this because I suffered from sciatica for 7 debilitating years.

I know what you've gone through. The things you never used to think twice about start deciding your whole day.

Getting out of bed.

Putting socks on.

Taking the dog for a walk.

Taking the dog for a walk was probably the worst.

I would hobble along behind him with my fingers crossed that nobody would stop to talk, in case I had to move in some way, even a casual one, that wasn't part of my careful plodding.

It turned me into the neighbor who crosses the street so he doesn't have to say hello.

Most nights I ended up in the recliner at three in the morning, reading other people's threads, looking for one that ended differently.

At 68, I thought I'd be stuck in that house for the rest of my life.

And I want to save you what this cost me.

Sciatica is a business. When you're desperate, and I was, you'll pay almost anyone who says they can help. I paid a lot of them. Some were good people who just didn't know. Some knew exactly what they were doing.

It took me years to tell the difference. By the end I had it down to three questions. My wife calls it my Wallet Test, because if someone fails it, that's where your hand should be.

One: what exactly is squeezing the nerve?

Not what you've got. You'll get a word for that: "sciatica," "pinched nerve," "wear and tear." I mean what, specifically, is pressing on it, and what they're going to do about that particular thing.

Two: how long until I'll know if it's working?

Anyone who says a week is guessing, or selling. Real answers come in weeks, and they'll tell you what you should notice first.

Three: when do I stop paying you?

If the honest answer is "never," that's not a treatment. It's a subscription.

I failed to ask all three for about five years. It cost me thousands of dollars.

That's why I'm writing this. If one person reads it and feels a bit less alone, or stops paying for things that were never going to work, then it was worth sitting down to write.

And I'll tell you now how it ends: I got my life back. Not my twenty-year-old life. But mine.

Here's how it went.

How It Started

I couldn't tell you when it started.

There was no fall.

No lifting something heavy.

No moment I could point to.

It was just an ache after I'd been sitting a while.

I'd stand up, limp a few steps, and it would ease off. So I didn't think much of it.

Then the ache stopped easing off.

It settled deep in my hip, right in the buttock, and started burning its way down the back of my leg.

April 21, 2019. Easter Sunday. I went to church. I was only there ten minutes before the pain was unbearable. I left the service and cried outside. It was the first Easter Sunday service I'd missed in 50 years.

That Easter was the day I stopped telling myself it would go away on its own. The next morning I called the doctor.

Three Doctors, One Word

My GP was first.

She pressed on my lower back, then the back of my leg, and before I'd finished describing it she'd said the word.

"Sounds like sciatica."

I asked her what was actually causing it.

"The sciatic nerve gets irritated. It happens."

I paid a co-pay for "it happens."

Six months later she sent me to an orthopedic surgeon. He ordered an MRI, and the verdict came back: "some narrowing, consistent with your age."

Which is doctor for you're old.

He gave me a cortisone shot. For three weeks I was a new man. I mowed the lawn. I told my wife I thought it was finally over.

The second shot wore off before I'd pulled into the driveway.

When I asked what came next, he didn't look up from his screen. "Surgery. If you leave it, you risk permanent damage."

I went home and read everything I could find. Two things stuck with me. A couple of years down the line, people who have the operation and people who don't end up in about the same place. And he wanted to operate on my spine without being able to tell me what was wrong with it.

So I tried physical therapy instead.

$200 a session for a laminated sheet of "special" stretches. Eight sessions. Later I found every one of them on YouTube, for free.

(I'll get to why stretching was never going to work. But I didn't know that then.)

I did them every morning on the bedroom floor for a year. My wife used to step over me on her way to the bathroom.

Last came the pain specialist. Gabapentin.

It got me to sleep. It didn't touch the leg. So I took more than I was supposed to. I left the stove on twice in one week. My wife started quietly moving the car keys.

On my third visit I asked him how long I'd be doing this.

"It's chronic sciatica. We'll manage it."

"For how long?"

He took his glasses off. He said it kindly. That was the worst part.

"Most people manage it for the rest of their lives."

I was sixty-six. I sat in the car afterwards, did the math on "the rest of my life," and didn't start the engine for a long time.

Three doctors. Four years. Every one of them could tell me what it was called.

Not one of them could tell me why.

So I stopped waiting for them, and started trying to fix it myself.

Fixing It Myself (Or Trying To)

If you've got sciatica, I'd bet you've got a drawer. Mine is in the spare room. It's where things go when they stop working.

The heating pad went in first. The first night on it, I nearly cried. Twenty minutes after I took it off, the burn was back down my leg like I'd never touched it. It felt like warming my hands on the outside of a locked door.

Then the massage gun. The first time I pressed it into the back of my hip, I felt the muscle give, like a fist opening. That's the spot, I thought.

Ninety seconds after I switched it off, the fist closed again. Every single time. I bought a bigger gun. Ninety seconds.

(That ninety seconds turned out to be the most important clue I had. I just didn't know it yet.)

Then infrared. I'd read it goes deeper than a heating pad, so I bought a $90 lamp. And it did go deeper, I could feel that. But you can't aim a lamp at the back of your own hip. Half the time I was warming my lower back and wondering why nothing changed.

So I made a routine of all three. Infrared in the morning. Massage gun after lunch. Heating pad at night.

Every one of them helped a little. None of them held for a while but I couldn’t fit them all in at the same time.

Twenty minutes. Ninety seconds. Three weeks from a shot. Everything worked, just never for long. And when everything works a little and nothing holds, that's not bad luck.

It's a clue. Something underneath was being touched for a moment and then left alone.

I just didn't know what.

Which is how I ended up in that recliner at three o'clock one morning, typing out my whole sorry story to a room full of strangers.

The Reply

I'd read these online forms for years but never written in one. That night I did.

"Seven years. Three doctors. Every one of them says sciatica and not one can tell me why. Everything works for a bit and then it doesn't. I've been told to manage it for the rest of my life. Has anybody actually got past this?"

In the morning there was one long reply. A retired physical therapist, 34 years in practice. She asked me not to use her name.

"Mark, 'sciatica' isn't a diagnosis. It's a description. It tells you the nerve is irritated. It doesn't tell you what's irritating it."

Then she asked me to do something.

"Sit on a firm chair. Find the bony point on the side of your hip, then your tailbone. Halfway between them, press in hard with your thumb for ten seconds."

I did it at the kitchen table and nearly came off the chair. The burn went straight down the back of my leg, the same path it had taken for seven years.

Seven years, and not one person had ever pressed there.

Under my thumb, she explained, is a muscle called the piriformis. Your sciatic nerve runs right underneath it. When the muscle gets irritated, it clamps down to protect itself, and a clamped piriformis sits on the nerve and squeezes it. The leg hurts, the muscle clamps harder, and round it goes.

Suddenly everything made sense. Why it started after sitting. Why I couldn't get through Easter service: sitting down, walking for a short time and especially lying on your side, puts your whole weight on that muscle. And why my MRI showed nothing useful: a scan of your spine doesn't show a muscle in your backside.

Then she told me why nothing had held.

"You had the right three things. You just used them at three different times of day."

The massage got the muscle to let go, but nothing kept it down, so ninety seconds later it clamped again. The heat opened up the blood flow, but with the muscle still clamped it was warming the outside of a locked door. The infrared was the right idea, but a lamp across the room never reached it. And the stretches were pulling on a muscle that was holding tight on purpose, which only made it hold harder.

"All three have to happen together, on the same spot. Massage to let it go, heat to flood it with blood while it's open, infrared to get deep while it's released. Every day. And don't expect it in a week. Give it three."

That was the first time in seven years that anyone had answered question one.

She wouldn't tell me what to buy. There were wraps now that did all three at once, she said, but she was retired, and she'd watched enough people sell things to people in pain.

I read her reply four times. Then I woke my wife and made her press on my backside.

What I Found

I'll tell you how I found it, because it matters.

I did what she said. I went looking for something that did all three things at once, on the hip.

There's a lot out there. And by then I had my three questions, so I used them.

The first few I found were just heating pads with a strap sewn on. One thing, not three. Into the "no" pile.

One had a handful of little lights on a belt that the reviews said barely got warm. No.

One promised to "eliminate sciatica in 7 days." I closed that tab so fast I nearly dropped the laptop. Anybody who tells you a week is guessing, or selling. That's question two.

And one looked perfect, until I read the small print and found you had to buy replacement pads every month to keep it working. That's question three. That's not a treatment. It's a subscription.

Then I found the one I use now.

Now, I know how this reads.

I've spent this whole post telling you to keep your hand on your wallet, and here I am about to tell you what I bought. If I were you, I'd be rolling my eyes right now.

So all I'll do is tell you what it is, and why it passed the same three questions I've told you to ask.

It's called the SciatiCalm Pro.

It's a wrap that goes around your hip and sits right over that spot, the one she had me press. It does exactly the three things she described, at the same time, in the same place:

Massage, working into the piriformis so it lets go.

Heat, opening up the blood flow while it's let go.

Infrared, getting down deep into the tissue, right where it's needed. Not from a lamp across the room, from right on top of it.

You wrap it on, sit down, and switch it on. Fifteen minutes. It turns itself off.

Here's how it did against my three questions.

One: what exactly is squeezing the nerve? It was built around the exact answer the physio gave me. A clamped piriformis sitting on the nerve. Nobody had to sell me that explanation, because I'd already had it for free, from someone with nothing to sell.

Two: how long until I'll know? I emailed them before I bought. I asked straight out how long it would take. They didn't say a week. They said most people notice a change somewhere in the first few weeks, and that's why they give you 90 days to decide. Send it back inside that and you get your money back. That was the first honest answer to question two I'd had from anyone.

Three: when do I stop paying? The day you buy it. No monthly pads. No refills. No "come back in three months." It lives next to my chair.

I'll be honest, I winced at the price. Then I added up the drawer in the spare room. The pad, two massage guns, a $90 lamp, a year of pills. And a single one of that second therapist's sessions cost more than half of it.

I ordered it that night.

It arrived on a Thursday. I put it on that evening, sitting in the same recliner where I'd written that post.

And I waited to see if this was going to be one more thing for the drawer.

The Million-Dollar Question: How Do I Feel Now?

Let me be straight about the start, because I'd have wanted someone to be straight with me.

The first two weeks, not much. It felt good while it was on, and I noticed my hip was a little looser at night. But I'd felt "a little looser" a hundred times before, and I wasn't getting excited.

Somewhere in the third week, I woke up at six in the morning and realized I hadn't woken up at three.

I lay there for a while, not moving, in case it was a fluke.

It wasn't.

Week five, I walked the dog around the whole block. The long way, past the school. When a neighbor stopped me to talk, I stood there and talked. Didn't shift my weight once. Didn't look for a wall.

Week seven, I noticed I'd stopped taking the gabapentin. Not a decision. I'd just forgotten to, three days running, and nothing had happened. My wife gave me back the car keys without saying a word.

So, do I feel like my twenty-year-old self again?

No. But I feel like my sixty-year-old self. And three years ago I'd have taken that and said thank you.

And I'm still getting better, week by week.

I get my own socks on in the morning. Standing up.

I'm back in the garden with my wife. She does the planting, I do the digging, same as it was for thirty years.

And last Sunday, I sat through the whole of the service at church. Start to finish. The first time since that Easter morning in 2019.

I cried again.

But nothing like the last time. Last time I was standing in the parking lot on my own. This time my wife was holding my hand, and I was crying because I'd made it to the end.

I think about that pain specialist sometimes. "Most people manage it for the rest of their lives."

He wasn't lying to me. He just didn't know.

That Was My Story

Excuse me if it ran long. I wanted to put down everything I could think of that might save you a year or two.

One more thing, because it needs saying.

Whatever you're going through with this, don't go through it alone. I spent years telling my wife I was tired. When I finally told her the truth, it didn't fix my leg. But it fixed a lot of other things.

If you've read this far and you want to try what I used, it's the SciatiCalm Pro, and this is the one I bought:

It was $279 when I got it. They've got it at $139 right now.

They give you 90 days. Give it at least three weeks before you decide.

The point I'm trying to make is simple.

If a stubborn 69-year-old who was told to manage it for the rest of his life can get his leg back, so can you.

There's hope. I promise you there's hope.

Stay strong, brothers and sisters.

Mark

P.S. If I could go back and do one thing differently, it wouldn't be buying anything. It would be asking that first doctor, the one with the crinkly paper, to press halfway between the bony point of my hip and my tailbone. Seven years. Nobody ever pressed there.

P.P.S. Week two is where I nearly gave up. Please don't. Week three is where it turned.

Comments

Add a comment ...

MEDICAL & HEALTH DISCLAIMER: The information and other content provided in this page, or in any linked materials, are not intended and should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment.

If you or any other person has a medical concern, you should consult with your health care provider or seek other professional medical treatment. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something that have read on this page or in any linked materials. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or emergency services immediately.