I feel guilty cause I only seem to come on here to vent in a crisis! I have had fibromyalgia since I was 35. I am now 67. The spring was emotionally stressful for me as I have strong differences of opinion with my sister and we had a falling out for a couple of months. We’ve gone back to supporting each other 1100 miles apart and avoiding certain topics. In June, I helped a friend weed her garden(she was diagnosed with elderly onset RA and was having trouble with her hands), then I realized what a mess our own yard was and weeded our yard in 2 hour increments over several days. I tried to push myself up out of a lower area and ended up bumping my knee and scraping it. Sometime after that, my left hip area started to hurt. My right hip was the first thing that hurt when I was first diagnosed so left was strange. Anyway, it got worse and by mid July was really hurting. My Dr did a cortisone shot in the are of the bursa and that really helped! The area higher up on my left hip still hurt but I was able to go on a very wonderful long planned Maui vacation and it didn’t interfere. I snorkeled every day, floated in the pool, and rested a lot. After I got home, sometime around mid August I started having worse pain again with numbness/tingling in my left calf and foot. I should have gone back to the Dr sooner but finally did after a couple of weeks. Dr thinks it stems from lower back issues. X-ray showed “mild wear and tear”. I’ve gone to accupuncture all summer but it hasn’t helped like usual. I’m scheduled for Pt but have to wait 2 weeks. MRI has been ordered but not scheduled. The last two days I have hurt to the point of crying, my brain fog is really bad, my blood pressure is up, and I just don’t feel well. I feel like all I do lately is complain. I’m scared and now my right hip is starting to hurt and I hurt all over today. I can tell my stress level and fear are making everything worse. Thank you for listening and any advice for getting out of this cycle while I’m waiting for tests, etc?
Hi Bambi,
Lovely to hear from you again. Don't worry about only coming here to vent - that's kind of the point, I think, and we can all relate to how necessary venting is!
To put your mind at ease a little on the symptoms in your leg - and perhaps pin-point at least a partial contributor to the hip pain - that kind of numbness and tingling is textbook for irritation of the sciatic nerve (a chunky nerve that starts in the spine and travels down through the hip, and all the way down the leg). I have a whole heap of damage in my lower spine, and have long suspected that the hip pain from my fibro (nasty!) is perhaps a little connected. I've read that while fibro pain can be totally random, it can also be an amplification of real issues within our body. Your doctor's conclusion sounds pretty logical. I'd guess that you've got some irritation in your back, which is triggering all sorts of fibro pain - so remember that the pain likely doesn't reflect the actual injury, which is probably relatively minor. Your stress is probably keeping your body in a flare too, so Sunkacola's advice is fab, as always
Sciatic issues can be tricky, because just a little inflammation in the spine can kick-start them, and then they can take a long time to improve. The good news is that these symptoms can be caused by inflammation alone - say, for example, if you twinged your back when you hurt your knee - which means that with time, they can go away all together.
A physio can usually help with this kind of thing, but you can also do certain stretches (Google "pigeon pose" - a great yoga position for sciatica) experiment with sleeping with a pillow under your hips/legs and perhaps try a local anti-inflammatory (I use diclofenac patches on my lower back when it gets inflamed, which helps!)
Probably not necessary, but I'll add the caveat that if your leg problems get worse over time or any increasing back pain emerges, I'd try to push for a CAT scan of your lower back, because they can't really see in detail what's going on from an X-ray. "Mild wear and tear" sounds pretty promising - most people's backs' show some damage when examined in adulthood - so hopefully you've got nothing to worry about at all. But, only a CAT scan or MRI will show definitively whether a nerve is actually getting pinched.
I hope you feel much better soon, and that your flare dissipates with ease!