[runner]

Thanks Phylly for the info. And thanks tconner94 for the tip.

Phylly, I probably react like you do to the procedures. With the epidurals, I got more inflammation at first and then it calmed down. They didn't help that much and then the facet joint injections were worse and definitely didn't help at all. I hurt for days after each of those and then the discogram, pushed everything off the charts.

I know that too many procedures are not good for the body. I could probably live with sciatica but I'm taking 1500 mg of Gabapentin daily and still feeling the sciatica. Exercise does increase the symptoms but then they go back to kind of a baseline. I know my nerves are already inflamed, exercise or not. And I don't believe the answer is to exercise less (although when this started, I reduced my walks to a distance of one mile). Exercise helps strengthen my back and core muscles which in turn helps stabilize the spine.

I have had these symptoms for 7 weeks now and they are not really abating. Although they might change and move around. Because of my health care background, I know that certain nerves are getting compressed. It is really obvious. I went to my podiatrist, who is like the best podiatrist around and I have been going to him since I was in college running, and told him my current symptoms. He poked around and found a spot near my ankle which is really tender on my right foot. The nerve goes right there and then wraps under my heel. So i got a cortisone shot there and the plantar fascia symptoms calmed down for a few days. I had plantar fascitis before and since I have had bad back pain,the pain from it has just been nerve-related. So instead of the normal plantar fascitis, my heel hurts when i am sitting and not when standing. I had the same symptoms before my surgery and a little bit afterwards. At that time, we figured it was not the normal plantar fascitis when my symptoms increased when i wasn't doing any exercise.

Maybe too technical.

I get conflicting opinions about what procedure can actually show the nerves after ADR. I was told MRI with contrast will still have artifact in it from the disc. I also saw where a CT with contrast might work. I am jumping the gun, but if I do get an earlier appointment with my doc I want to be informed. I know he told me that an MRI would have too much artifact to show anything.
You know my doc and believe me, he is very conservative. I don't think he would do a test if he thought it would cause a lot of harm.

I always go with the conservative docs because I believe in conservative treatment. Too many times, I have seen things go wrong with an overzealous doc. I picked my doctor, who has not done as many ADRs as others, because of his skill and I trust him. I could have made an appt with a more well-known ADR doc, but I don't care if they have done 500 ADRs. I once made the mistake of having arthroscopic surgery with a top orthopedic knee doc and I regreted that. Because that doc, did not take as good care of me as maybe a less well-known doc would. And I worked for this doc, but this was before I went into the health field and could sniff out the really good docs.

I just want some answers because I am really not getting any better and i want to know why.

A lot of times, I don't show pain too well. Meaning, I hide it well and so if I don't complain loudly, no one listens to me. That is the way I am. I have always felt I have a high pain threshold and when I was running track in college and afterwards, I got used to hiding pain. This happened in the hospital right after my back surgery. I got up with PT and we are walking the hallway with the walker and he says, "You must not be in much pain, is your level 5-6?" And I laughed, and said, "More like 9 out of 10." I was really hurting and he couldn't tell.

So this is what is happening now; I really need to yell a little louder.

So last time I see my doc, he says I can go up on the Gabapentin because I was taking a "low" dose of 900 mg a day but he warns me about dizziness and I told him I haven't gotten dizzy from Gabapentin but he says I could. So I slowly went up on the Gabapentin to the current dose. I could go up to one more tab, but I honestly don't think I could remember to take a pill six times a day. LOL. Doesn't make me dizzy, just makes me want to eat and makes me sleepy.

Currently, I am real pissed off because I feel a whole lot better except for the right-sided back pain and the sciatica stuff. I feel like I didn't go through this surgery ordeal to have this happen now.

Phylly, yes, you could have done more harm having the decompression surgery, but it is a done deal and you cannot really beat yourself up about it. Pain and numbness are not normal physiological reactions; they are the body's way of telling you that something is wrong. You need to find out what is wrong so you can get better. MRIs are a piece of cake. The only way they are harmful is if there is metal around. Please keep me informed on how it goes. One thing I found out from all the back research I did, the back is incrediblly complicated and we need to tread lightly when we are fooling with it.

Hang in there.