Pain: Sciatic Nerve

The patter of midnight rain quietly echoed around Raymond’s studio.  He loved to paint when the world slept.  The night sky, crinkled by a summer storm, set his mind ablaze with strokes of form and color.  But of course, this particular painting was commissioned by a local business and he frustratingly held back his inspiration of naked nymphs dancing about a bottle of Sunshine Mineral Water.  Turning away from the canvas to fetch additional mineral spirits he felt a sudden jolt of stinging pain in his lower back.  It diminished as quickly as it started, but left him with a sudden awareness that he may have strained his back muscles from the lawn mowing he had done in the morning. 

Raymond had a tendency to push a bit too hard to get a job done, and at the age of 65 his muscles were stiff and did not allow for much impulsive action.  The jolt of pain across his bow of awareness was nature’s way of yelling STOP.  Unfortunately, Raymond ignored the warning and continued painting into the dew drop hours of early morning.  Within a week, he was shuffling around his studio attempting to paint while a stinging stream of pain coated his lower left leg.  But our hero could not be stopped.  He finished the Sunshine Mineral Water advertisement and continued to work under a back splitting barrage of crippling pain.  Eventually, as is always the case, nature won, and Raymond found himself unable to walk.

This began months of chronic pain, that would not abate, nor could it be ignored.  Had Raymond heeded the early warning, his life might not have turned into a bitter battle of sleepless nights and chair ridden days of boredom.  He could neither stand, nor lay down without inflicting more pain.  Eventually, he did get medical attention and the tests demonstrated that the sciatic nerve running out of his spinal column and down the left leg was being squeezed by muscle tension.  The remedy was rest, medication for pain, muscle relaxers and physical therapy.

Sciatic pain is a symptom of an irritant on the sciatic nerve and is commonly diagnosed by use of an MRI.  Without medical testing there is no clear way of diagnosing the nature of the irritant.

“According to Dr. W. Shiel, Disc herniation can directly press upon the spinal cord and/or adjacent nerve tissues resulting in pain which radiates outward from the spine in the distribution of the affected nerve. When the disc herniation is in the spine of the lower back, it can cause a radiating pain down the legs, commonly referred to as sciatica. While sciatica is most commonly a result of a disc herniation directly pressing on the nerve, any cause of irritation or inflammation of this nerve can reproduce the symptoms of sciatica. These causes include irritation of the nerve from adjacent bone, tumors, muscle, internal bleeding, infections, injury, and other causes.”

Raymond’s condition gradually improved but it was a long and arduous journey.  He found that the muscle relaxer was very effective, but it did make him loopy.  He opted for taking pain and anti-inflammatory medication during the day and used the muscle relaxer only at night.  He also found that he could walk around a shopping mall by leaning over a shopping cart while pressing his forearms down on side walls of the cart.  This apparently reduced pressure on the spine.  For a number of weeks this was his only method for getting some exercise.  Also, the use of a pillow tucked between his legs gave him some relief while in bed.

Regardless of the initial cause, all pain is subjective; that is, you cannot find pain under a microscope.  Pain is an interpretation by the brain, making it more of a perception than a sensation. Chemical changes in body tissue are monitored by the brain (our awareness) and if interpreted as harmful, there is a perception of pain.  Pain management centers use this knowledge to teach methods of coping with pain, such as biofeedback and relaxation methods. The question yet to be resolved by research is: “whether receptivity to pain is biological in origin and completely dependent on the brain, or whether the mind, the entity in an individual responsible for thought, and feelings, conscious or unconscious, controls the nervous system and in the end manipulates one’s perception of pain (Cass Barnes 2002)”.

The Stanford Encyclopedia provides an excellent review regarding pain as a subjective experience.  It stands to reason that if pain is in fact ‘subjective’ then such techniques as EFT should be incorporated into any treatment plan of pain.