Anybody have this? I was diagnosed a few months ago. I hate muscle relaxers(they make me silly :p ) so I rarely take them, but what else can I do for the pain? I've started doing Pilates with an instructor 3 times a week, but thats going to take a while before it starts making a difference. Any advice?

you could ask for neurontin. It works well for some, others it doesn't, but couldn't hurt to ask your doc for info on it. I used to use Ibuprophen. I found muscle relaxers never helped in that area. Just out of curiosity, what is the cause of your sciatica? I am wondering if that is something I will have to deal with for the rest of my life, even if I have surgery. Hope you get some relief!

I'm not sure what caused it. There were no injuries or anything. What about you? The only thing that I can think of is that I used to pop my back all the time :nono: . Ibuprofen never really helped much either. What is neurontin? I hope this isn't a life long thing either! Good luck!

well, I had a bulge in my lumbar level that I had surgery on two years ago. Now I have three, two in lumbar one in cervical. Neurontin is primarily an anti-seizure med, but I work in rehab and many of our docs prescribe it for nerve pain. I had it once, but the dosage was too low to do anything. You have to find the right amount for your pain. I would hope that with exercising and strengthening you can over come the sciatica, but I don't know. For me, it would be long term since there is injury. For you, I don't know. I don't know much about it unless it is associated with an injury.

There are a lot of different causes of sciatica (which just means irritation of the sciatic nerve). Have you had an MRI, Jess? Disk stuff is one set of causes, as well as piriformis muscle syndrome, and several other things. Prognosis depends on getting a diagnosis that includes not just the name, but the cause. In many cases, sciatica does get better, especially if its from a disk bulge that is contained and not too severe. If it's fully herniated, PT can help, but it's likely to recur periodically. Surgery is a last resort and, in most instances, only if there is objectively determined nerve damage (weakness, muscle atrophy, abnormal emg test).

Standingman

I had an MRI, but it was on my knee. They did that because I had pain there related to the Sciatica but they wanted to make sure that there was nothing else going on in regards to that. I think I actually will make an appt. to get my back x-rayed, just to be safe. The pilates and physical therapy is helping, but I still get spasms in the middle of the night :mad: .