I complained to my family physician, John Shelton M.D., and he had a MRI done of my lower back and put me on prednisone for two weeks. Everything in the MRI was normal except for the slight inflammation in the lumbar region. He said that could not be causing all the pain I was having. I told him how I had been injecting lidocaine in my hip to numb the area. I have a friend who is a retired doctor who gve me the lidocaine for the horses. I give myself allergy shots on a regular basis and when this pain got so severe it became unbearable I decided to numb the area. He said he would give me a cortisone injection in that area if I wanted. He told me he had been trained to never inject the sciatic nerve area but since I'd been doing it myself he said he would see if it helped. It helped for about a week then all the irritation came back. Dr. Shelton sent me to a back specialist, Dr. Hisey, who diagnosed pyriformis syndrome. This is where the nerve can actually go through the middle of the piriformis muscle. He told me he took one look at the position I sat in to get relief and knew it had to do with the piriformis muscle. He sent me for physical therapy, which didn't help. The Dr.Hisey had a MRI performed of my right hip region and everything was normal. NOTHING SHOWED UP! He gave me an injection of cortisone where the greater trocanther (top of the leg bone) meets the pyriformis muscle to see if it might be inflammation from bursitis rather than sciatica. The cortisone helped for about a week.

I was sent back to my family physician because my problem was out of Dr.Hisey's area of expertise. Dr. Shelton found a neurosurgeon for me to go see named Lee Kesterson. I told Dr. Kesterson how miserable I was and he wanted to do a couple of cortisone injections to rule out the lower back and set me up for the injection. The physician who would perform the injection wanted to do the procedure as an outpatient, which would cost me $250 for my co-pay on my insurance. I called Dr. Kesterson's office and he agreed to forgo this test since I was so adamant that it wouldn't help and I didn't want to throw away $250. I did tell him how I could numb the area by injecting it with lidocaine and the pain would subside.

Dr. Kesterson did want me to have the cortisone injection in the pyriformis area and said he would try to find a doctor who could do it in his office. He contacted a couple of his associates and they wanted to do it as an outpatient basis. Normally, physicians are nervous about injecting medications around the sciatic nerve. I went back to Dr. Shelton, and he did it for me. He figured, since I had been injecting myself with lidocaine to deaden the pain and hadn't injured myself he could do it as well. The cortisone helped for about ten days and then the pain came back. After this Dr. Kesterson agreed to perform exploratory surgery but made it clear that he might find nothing or even make me worse. I was willing to take the chance. Something was causing the problem. He found the ball of scar tissue digging in and across the nerve within 30 minutes.

*Steps To Reduce Pain*

I took Toradol (generic is called Ketrolac) for almost two years without side effects. It is a wonderful non-narcotic pain reliever if you can tolerate it. I had a couple of liver function tests to make sure there were no problems from the drug. I was always fine. It is not a narcotic so it never made me groggy.

Flaxseed can be purchased at almost any health food store and contains omega-3 alpha-Linoic Acid and omega-6 cis-Linoic Acid which is a nutrient necessary for the body to minimize its production of inflammatory chemicals. Flaxseed is good for any type of inflammation and it is believed that inflammation arises from a shortage of these two fatty acids.