hello! hopefully i can describe clearly and succinctly what is going on... not always easy for me. my lower back has rumbled at me since i was a young person with cute swayback to fierce sciatica working on an assembly line in my 20s to not moving enough while playing music hunched over a fiddle and doing music research over dusty old books hours at a time since then. and now, some kind of multi form arthritis and vascular involvement making it tricky to be upright, so lots of time laying down, altho I'm better at changing position often, and i have targeted intentional exercises. but! just over three weeks ago, covid came in the house, and i got it. my husband, who got it first had two days of awful, and pushed through the other days. I'm immunosuppressed from medicine i take, and after i tested positive, contacted the clinical decision office to get anti viral medication. i tested positive for nineteen days, and have just today tested negative for three days in a row. I'm still coughing, and fevers still crop up a couple times a day. that's something that happens with me anyway. having high fevers and more aches than usually, i haven't been keeping up with my regime, and i can tell. I've managed to restart on mobility, but not execute yet (oh, the coughing).
my main problem right now is that i was putting some hip pain/ sacro pain lower down on my list because my right knee is locking and painful and i have had some other back issues that needed speedier attention, and so far everyone i asked said, oh, it's likely knock on from your knee, your back, your spine, it will clear up when we get those sorted. but the process and progress has been slow. unofficially, there's an idea that i have hip bursitis, cause from poor gait with the wobbly knee.
ugh. horrible run on sentences. my main problem is that i now have pain in my sacro whatsit sliding down both hips, and shooting down over the tops of both thighs. it feels like tooth cavity pain, hit a nerve pain, not sore muscles. and I've never had sciatica on both sides before. I'd not be surprised if it's related to being fevered and in bed and isolated for three weeks, but knowing a possible cause doesn't stop the pain. i have a lot of pain management techniques, mental ones, rewiring type things, but also, codeine and tramadol and nefopam and aspirin. the only thing that worked to calm the cough was codeine and antihistamines, so i was using those more regularly than usual. but this pain was even on when a full whack was at its prime. i was given a tens machine to use for sciatic nerve stuff, and even tho i don't think this was that i did try. i was able to get about 20 mins of pain relief with an hour of jolts. definitely not the same.
when i called 111 because, Saturday afternoon, i could not take anymore, three days even more broken sleep, coughing was like shaking a feverish ragdoll, i was basically told there would be no point going in then. there's be no specialist to see me, and they wouldn't be able to prescribe anything above what i was taking already. so, tomorrow, i call. somebody. and plead. and try not to give up.
do any of the signs and symptoms seem familiar? not looking for a diagnosis, obviously, but, have you had experience with this? what helps you with long time acute pain that doesn't muffle? also, i don't know if it's coming through, but this is longer than succinct, and that's because this is in fact a rant as well. i hurt so bad, and i don't want to keep it together, and i was trying to not over burden, but now that i actually need help, i can't access it, but i have no one to blame but self. aaargh!
right. typing this on my phone. gonna go warm my hands up.
thank you for reading. it's very helpful to me to have written, and if you do have helpful suggestions or encouragement, I'd love to hear.
kind regards
cath tyler