Does it get better? 25 y/o male
Hi everyone,
tl;dr 5 weeks sciatica. Plantar heel pain when stepping. Not plantar fasciitis. Can walk still. Looking for advice.
I’ve been looking at this forum for a bit now reading everyone’s different experiences. This truly does seem like one of the worst and most confusing injuries I’ve come across.
For reference, I am a 25 year old male. Before my injury, I was extremely athletic, possibly overdoing it on a daily basis for the last few years running 30+ mile weeks at vigorous paces and religiously using the stairmaster. Hindsight is 20/20 now that I was slowly creeping up on this. I’d spend 1-1.5 hours each day in the gym or outdoors, sticking very much to a routine. I’ve never been much into stretching albeit some bouts with plantar fasciitis and runners knee helped me figure out how to use bands to stretch.
After a 4.5 hour drive home one day and a long run, I bent over to unload the dishwasher & my left calf went numb. No pain. Nothing— just numbness. Quickly learned this might have been a disc issue so I paused running immediately and began walking. I tend to do things in excess, so I walked 8 miles feeling fine, just numb.
I had preplanned a trip that was slightly ruined by sciatica, whereas I could still run/walk, but the numbness faded into left-sided foot/calf pain, more on my calf near my heel when stepping. I would think this was plantar fasciitis if it resolved with activity, but that’s not the case. Walking shoes with a ton of heel support have seem to have helped, but I am still feeling it zapped infrequently. I have since turned the dial back and just walked, a lot. Each day I’d still be walking like crazy. No pain immediately afterwards or during, but in the evening I’d take it easy with McKenzie and McGill for my lower back because the pain did start then like clockwork. I’ve plateaued here now doing my own self-PT protocol from online PDFs while awaiting the formal referral from my PCP for more structured advice. It’s week 5 now and my foot has pretty much all the pain with my lateral plantar heel taking the brunt of it all. I made the mistake of thinking slight jogging and nerve flossing would be good to try, and I flared it pretty bad. Dialed back walking to <2 miles and this is where I’m at now. Along the sural nerve seems to be where I can pinpoint it to. I’ve had no formal imaging done however.
This is such a weird case because my lower back, thigh, and buttocks have never been painful. I’m still able and very grateful to move with these slight modifications and slight zaps that stop me from running or incline walking, but man this sucks! I’ve found that biking flares me up like crazy, recumbent or seated so I’m absolutely terrified to try anything else other than walking. I may try the elliptical just to get some activity and test that one out.
I’m just looking for advice on what to do. Does it get better and is there ever a point where I can do the high impact stuff I enjoyed before? Wishing everyone the best.