[runner]

Terry,

I don't know if I would say I am making progress. At least, the back pain isn't so bad. It scares me that I can point to two incidences where I felt very sharp back pain and then I had return of sciatica one week later.
I have decided that if things are not better by next Monday, that I will call my doc. I don't think I made it clear to him that my legs are numb or tingling most of the time. I don't have to sit to have my right foot fall asleep, it does that when I go for a walk. I often stamp my foot against the ground because it falls alseep when I am standing in the kitchen.
These are not symptoms I had before the sciatica returned. I had minor tingling before in my lower legs and had no sciatica.

I have a very intuitive sense of what happens physically. Meaning when I was taking care of patients on units, I often had a feeling that a patient might go south. I learned to listen to that sense and it helped my work.
I also have found I have that same sense about what happens to my body. I know when something is wrong; like I thought something was wrong when I first had the "extreme" backpain in 2007 and was being told repeatedly I just had a muscle strain.

Some muscle strain.

Now, I don't particularly like treatments or visits to doctors, but I cannot ignore how I feel. As much as I try to reason things away or think things are getting better, the fact is that I now have more severe sciatica than I had before surgery and the radiculopathy is much worse.
I just need to find out if this is the normal healing process or something else. Hopefully, it is just normal.

Right now I am kind of slouching back on the couch and typing with my laptop on a pillow. I have numbness, tingling or burning in both feet and shins and I have sciatica in my right leg despite taking my Gabapentin over an hour ago. The top of my feet feel cold right now and the right side of my back hurts. I have only been in this position for a few minutes. I know I cannot lie down all the time so I alternate positions.
I feel that my L4/5 disc is good. I do have increased flexiblility but I am limited in PT on how much i can do. I feel like what i do is very little. I have been an athlete all my life and miss being in shape.

Well, enough doomsday talk. Too many morose thoughts. My daughter had a play rehearsal today and I was in charge of the dinner to feed the kids. I was told I needed to feed 40 people. I made baked Ziti and it went over well. It was cool to see those teenagers scarfing down food. I mean I used to eat that way when I was 126 pounds and had the metabolism of a tiger. This is something I would not have been able to do before surgery since I was in too much back pain.
So it is nice to be able to cook and cook for 40 people, LOL.