[ktblunden]

I know exactly what you're going through. My pain started in what I thought was my left knee, but I couldn't pinpoint exactly where or how it hurt. As time went on it became a sharp radiating pain from my hip all the way to my foot and my toes were numb most of the time. I fought with crappy insurance for a while (Kaiser is really good at preventive stuff, really bad at actually providing treatment) then switched to my wife's much better insurance. I found a good, well recommended spinal specialist (this is key, find someone who actually specializes in the area and ask around about their reputation). I had a massive herniation at L4-L5 and a smaller one at L5-S1, both were pressing on the left sciatic nerve root.

I had a couple epidurals, the second of which relieved my pain completely for about two and a half months (the first was done by Kaiser and they missed the nerve). The pain came back after that, and ended up a little worse than before. I made the hard decision and on July 28 of this year I had a microdiscectomy surgery. He went in and removed the herniated disc material and freed up as much room around the nerve as possible. This was a pretty routine, not too severe surgery (other choice was a fusion, which is basically a last resort). I have been completely pain free in my leg since the 3rd week of recovery and I'm just about completely rehabbed as far as my back muscles. I was out of work for 2 months.

So there you have it. Pain coming from back problems is horrible, and it can affect quality of life severely. I hope everything gets all squared away for you. Will you be sedated during the epidural? I've done awake and sedated and I would definitely recommend sedated. Awake isn't bad, but it is really uncomfortable and obviously much more stressful. You'll get through it fine, it's one of the most performed back procedures and I think my last one took about 7 minutes total, including local anesthetic injections.