"Sciatica, or pain in your leg that comes from irritation of the sciatic nerve in your back, can cause pain and numbness or tingling in your leg and limit your ability to sit, drive, walk or go to work."
- Brett Sears, physical therapist certified in mechanical diagnosis, May 7, 2014
My timing was exquisite.
On Thursday, May 8 as I looked forward to a month of special days - Mothers' Day, Victoria Day long weekend and the anniversary of my 58 years in Canada - I spent sunshine-happy hours on hands and knees, digging horsetails out of the garden bed.
Finished around four, I went inside for a cuppa feeling on top of the world. Spring had really arrived.
Mid-day Friday, hoping to beat the rain forecast for the afternoon, I helped shovel the last of two pickup loads of new topsoil onto the waiting bed.
"That should put paid to the horsetails for a while," I thought.
Rain would ready the soil for the bedding plants on the weekend.
Hah! The rain arrived on time but my involvement in the planting was not to be.
A job well done, we tidied away the tools and I went inside to vacuum and do some laundry.
Pleasantly tired when finished, I had done nothing foolish to challenge my back, so I ignored the twinges that began later that evening.
In hindsight, having suffered several bouts of sciatica in the past, I should have known better. Had I paid attention, some liniment might have averted the two-plus weeks of pain and house arrest I'm still enduring as I write.
Instead, I was awake half the night and by Saturday morning my back was locked up and protesting painfully with every movement large or small.
But the whole experience was not without its funny moments.
The first wry smile came when the family invited me to celebrate Mothers' Day with a walk around Stanley Park and a dinner to follow. Did I say 'good timing'? Matters worsened overnight to the point where I took a cab in the morning to spend Mom's Day with the folks at Lions Gate - an experience all its own.
I was unable to walk to the doors and so ER staff brought a wheelchair - a contraption that appeared to have been cobbled together with parts from a bicycle shed.
Stronger than it looked, it got me to reception where I checked in and was taken to a room to await I knew not what. Unable to climb on the gurney, I sat in that wheelchair or stood leaning against the bed, just watching people come and go in the corridor for the better part of two hours until I was joined by a very pleasant doctor who decided to send me for a CT scan.
When I murmured I couldn't lie down on my back - or rather that I couldn't get up if I did - the doc said not to worry, there'd be people around to help. Bah humbug! Climbing onto the scan bed and turning onto my back was painful enough. But when those poor helping hands tried to sit me up, roll me over or otherwise move me off the bed, my back launched me screaming and writhing into space. I had no time to anticipate the pain and the cramping lockdown. When it comes to pain, childbirth has nothing on sciatica - and there's no epidural to relieve it.
Home with meds by four it was funny looking back but there has to be a better way - for both patient and long-suffering ER staff.
Long story short, sciatica is a beast we should all know more about if we are to save ourselves excruciating pain and the healthcare system thousands of dollars.
There is much we can do ourselves and even more if only the province would put more emphasis on preventive modalities that can keep people out of crowded emergency departments and surgery beds.
Ordinary folk cannot afford $60 to $100/hour for the expert massage and physiotherapy advice that could steer our exercise attempts into the right channels. So we're left to do what we can, often making poor exercise choices in the doing.
Until this event, I walked nearly every morning. Now, whatever good that achieved is lost. Once again, I'm back at the square one
I've known since my first sciatic attack about five years ago - losing whatever fitness I had gained.
Never again. When I'm mobile and able to sleep in bed not the armchair, I'll return to walking and call on fellow sciaticans to join me in raising funds for modern wheelchairs for the Lions Gate emergency department.
For now - heartfelt thanks to those who've kept me in groceries and taken out the garbage - and remember: if you don't want an unplanned space trip, just don't sneeze if you get sciatica! [email protected]
