Does an Epidural work for Sciatica

Evening

I ended up going private for an mri and paying for an epidural.

I too tried a multitude of pain killers and felt the doctors just wanted me to leave on many occasions as I felt they were not helping. The epidural took for me 3 weeks to take effect and I'm still having issues. The issue is you could pay for epidural but there is no guarantee it would work. Also no one can tell you how long it will last if successful xx

Hope that information works xx

Hope your pain-free soon.

Take care

Sazzie42 x

hi Dave,

 absolutely  going private will speed things up. I have said in another email I went through 'choose and book' which is a system through  your GP which gives you choices of where to have your treatment etc. The point is to get waiting lists down. In my case the choices are other NHS hospitals but in there should be some private choices which means you are a NHS patient but the care is through a private hospital , you just need to go through the list , I think there are 5 or 6 choices ( there was for me) . I have done this twice now but once you are under the consultant in the private hospital you stay within that hospital so my 3rd microdisectomy was in March 2016 and my sciatic pain is back I saw the consultant at the Nuffield last Thursday and my Mri scan came through the post on Saturday with a date for 30th June , you can't get quicker than that ! 

i can't tell you how fantastic the system is going through as a NHS patient but using private hospitals , when you are in so much pain you need quick referrals and treatment and I can't recommend it enough . I had my first microdisectomys in 2012 after having steroid injections and analgesic injections but I never had any relief so then had disectomy unfortunately it went again later that year so I had another disectomy l4/l5 and a revision of l5/s1 I then had a period of being really well until late 2013 so had injections but no relief and had my 3rd disectomy in March this year . Hope this information is helpful and you get some help soon. 

regards

Julie

I have had 4 epidural injections all with the nhs each one has had different effects after a recent 2 week stay at a specialist neurosurgery hospital I was referred to pain management at my local hospital, I didn't hold out much hope I was taking oromorph and even that wasn't helping with the pain I couldn't walk properly and at 20 years old I felt like I had no future! oh how was I wrong within 2 weeks I had an appointment to see a consultant and he booked me in for two injections a week apart facite joint, steroid and epidural in each sitting after the first I had about 10% improvement and reduced my oromorph intake and the second about 30% no more oromorph needed just tramadol, codine, naproxen, diazipam, amatriptaline and mst's! I'm at a stage now where I can go out to the shop on my own without anything but a crutch I couldn't walk ten steps before that and am now waiting for a physio to see me next week to help improve that even further! I couldn't recommend the nhs enough for my treatment this time around but my first experience of epidural injections wasn't the best I had horrendous pains after worse than what I had before but after 4 weeks I began to improve this was in 2012 and the second one wasn't much better I think alot of it is down to my home exercise program that I have done this time around to get me on the mend.

I hope this helps whatever you do try to avoid surgury and attempt pain management first although there is a clear surgical target I wanted to try everything else first and I'm glad I did it may not last forever and I'm aware of that but for now I'm doing what's best for me ??

All the best

I have now had "sciatica" for 5 weeks....no idea how it happened.... The severe pain has diminished, still sore but more of dead pain and powerless feeling in my left leg. I have had numbness in the left side of my hamstring, calf, heel and two smallest twos that is not drifting. my left leg feels dead.

I haven't had MRI yet as my GP has advised me that the standard "normal" recovery is 9-12 weeks.

I was on tramadol etc and it was horrific, side effects, now on very little meds.

I attend physio weekly, too painful for much physio procedures but they have given me three acupunture treatments, very painful on numb areas, not sure of its effectiveness but I will persevere with expert advice.

Walking and exercise is exhausting, I hope that's because I have been resting for weeks but it's a strange numb pain in leg and sole of foot and a very strange feeling of weakness and fatigue.

I can't give you much more at this stage, I am uncertain how this will end but I hope it disappears as quickly and as mysteriously as it appeared.

I hope this helps