This week has been... interesting.

Late last week, I started having pain in my back. Not pain related to my growing retroperitoneal lymph nodes, but nerve pain that felt like it was caused by an irritated sciatic nerve. I injured my back more than 10 years ago and had a long bout with sciatic nerve pain, so I'm familiar with the symptoms. Over the years, I've had a few relapses where the pain returned.

This time, it started out fairly mildly on Thursday or Friday evening. I used a heating pad to relax the muscles, and for the most part, other than some discomfort which shifting from sitting to standing or vice versa, I was able to function normally, despite the pain.

Over the weekend, the pain continued to get worse as the sciatic area became more and more irritated. This culminated early Tuesday morning when I woke up at 12:30am with my whole back entirely seized up. It was so tight and painful that I couldn't move much more than my toes. I was unable to roll over, sit up, or do anything that required the use of my completely frozen back muscles. 

I woke up Melissa and we tried to figure out what to do. We briefly considered calling an ambulance, since my pain level was around a 9 or a 10, and any sort of movement just made it even worse. Eventually, Melissa was able to roll me over enough to place a heating pad under my back, and after about 30 minutes, the muscles began to relax. I still wasn't able to move very easily, but as long as I stayed still, my pain was under control.

Thankfully, Melissa's college roommate and dear friend was in town, and Melissa was able to call her to come over and stay with our kids while we went to the ER. It was a slow and painful journey to the car, and I ended up riding in the cargo area of our Toyota RAV4, sitting on my knees with my torso draped over the back seat for the two-block drive to the local hospital.

When we arrived, I was checked in and evaluated. They put me flat on a bed, which seemed to be the best position for eliminating the pain.

Lying in the bed in the ERAfter taking my history, the ER doctor gave me some Valium as a muscle relaxer, assuming that the pain was muscular in nature. After a few hours, they gave me a CT scan to look for a cause of the back pain, but the scan didn't reveal any musculoskeletal cause.

I was prescribed more Valium to use as a muscle relaxer, and after walking around in a circle in the hall to demonstrate my mobility (albeit still with extreme pain standing and walking), I was released. In truth, I spent 6 hours in the emergency room, and was not doing any better upon discharge than I had been when I arrived.

I rode back home in the cargo area of the RAV4 and slowly, painfully, made it back to bed. I had grand visions of the back pain retreating enough for me to be able to teach my classes on Tuesday morning, but by 8am, the pain was so debilitating with movement that I couldn't even move well enough to get out of bed. (I'll spare you the details of the alternative use I discovered for empty plastic applesauce containers).

I rested in bed for most of the day on Tuesday, and was able to get an appointment to see my chiropractor at 2PM on Tuesday. At this point, the pain was so bad that I literally crawled on my hands and knees from my bed to the back of the RAV4. This time, we removed the car seats and put down the back seat so I could lay flat in the cargo area for the 15-minute drive to the chiropractor.

Selfie from the cargo hold of the RAV4 en-route to the chiropractor

When we arrived, Melissa went in to check-in for my appointment and explain my situation. Rather than having me come in, one of the doctors came out to evaluate me, and recommended that I stay in the car and go home rather than being adjusted. In my condition, he explained, an adjustment would just further aggravate the inflamed sciatic nerve and increase the length of time it would take to heal. He explained that emergency room physicians are usually not well trained in dealing with back pain, and so they end up prescribing muscles relaxers and pain killers, which do absolutely nothing for sciatic nerve inflammation.

He recommended I go home and give my back at least 72 hours of rest, icing my back for 30 minutes, waiting an hour, and starting over. He also recommended contacting my doctor and requesting a prescription for a steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that would help calm down the inflammation of the sciatic area.

Thankfully, my physician was more than willing to prescribe an anti-inflammatory, and so I spent the rest of the day Tuesday and all day Wednesday icing my back regularly and taking the prescribed medications.

By Thursday morning, although still not at 100%, I was able to get up and move around, take a shower, and get dressed to teach my classes. I wore a back brace for the morning to provide extra support, and I was able to teach both of my classes with minimal discomfort. By early afternoon, some of the pain was returning, so I went home early and have been resting my back and icing it again. I am hopeful that another day or so of rest will return things to normal once again.

Thanks again to all of you who are so faithfully praying for us and encouraging us in so many ways. We love you all.