My Sciatica & Blood Clot Journey in 2009

In 2009 I developed very bad Sciatica pain going down from my lower back to the bottom of my left foot and to the tip of toes – it was very painful and I ended up in hospital with it.

I think it was November 2009 when my GP sent me for an MRI scan of my lower back and i was so bad I needed help getting off the table of the MRI its almost like I lost all power in my legs.

In December 2009 around about the 15th, one morning at around 2am I got up to go to the toilet and on the way back I collapsed on the floor in terrible pain – but more than that I had no power in my legs to even get up, like someone just pulled my legs away from me, so just lay there and shouted out waking up the family. My wife Val could not help me up at all , I was like a dead weight, and called 999 for paramedics who brought me into Sligo General Hospital.

When I got into the hospital A&E dept and they done some tests they said that I would have to be admitted, and in true fashion they had no beds on the ward so I would have to wait for the first available bed on the Orthopaedic ward . So I was shoved in a draughty corridor with some other patients until morning.

In the morning around ten I got to see a consultant who told me that the previous MRI showed there were 2 slipped discs in the lower back and that (I cannot remember if it was 1 or both of them) was pressing on the sciatic nerve. so that explained the pain down to my left foot anyway.

The consultant said that she was going to buttock (gluteal) injection for sciatica which delivered steroids and local anesthetic directly into the muscle to reduce inflammation and relieve compressed nerve pain. I cannot lie, it was a painful injection.

On the way back to the ward a hospital porter wheeled me back in a wheelchair to the ward, and I think he said something like “you want to watch you don’t get a blood clot like his uncle got after sciatica, try to keep mobile even if it hurts” or something like that, but at the time i didn’t think any more about it.

The next day (or it might have have ben the day after) I was wheeled up to the operating rooms and an injection was given in my lower back called caudal epidural steroid injection into the epidural space at the base of the spine.
That was very painful! – I kept hearing the nurse/doctor administering it saying that they ‘could not get into the right space/area’

– I read later on that this injection should be guided with the help of a x-ray – however I did not see any machine when I went into the operating side room .. maybe there was but maybe I just didnt see it because my back was to her. all I could feel beforehand was her feeling with her fingers where the space was where she had to inject.

so I had that done and also another day had another injection this time I had to fast for this one, curl up into a ball (fetal position) on the operating table and then the consultant administered the injection at the base of the spine again. presumably it was steroid injection or cortisol something like that.

So, i was about a week in the Orthopaedic ward – a couple of times I collapsed in pain and the porters/nurses/doctors had to lift me back into the bed – I had no power to actually get back up off the floor myself – once they got me in bed they administered a shot of Morphine for the pain, which was a godsend to take the pain away for a while and give me relief. But it wasn’t nice the side effects from the morphine made me very tired and disoriented and nauseous – I could be talking away to someone and the next minute I had nodded off to sleep!

Whilst I was in there in the ward every night the drugs tolley came around and along with my tablets (I was on Lyrica Pregabalin and paracetamol as far as I can remember) I was getting a daily injection into my stomach – when I asked what that was for the nurse said it was given to prevent blood clots and that it was heparin injections.

Whilst on the Orthopaedic ward , a nurse come around with some dissolvable Magnesium in a glass and said that one of the blood tests that come back said I was very deficient in Magnesium – yeah that was a surprise to me, i would not have realised that had I not been admitted with my Sciatica.

at the end of the week the consultant came around to the bed and (in a pretty rude manner) said to me ‘what are you doing in here, you no longer have to be in here, there is nothing more we can do for you here’ – so I hobbled down on my Zimmer frame to the nurses station and told them that the consultant said I could go home and they just asked me to wait whilst they sorted out my medication prescriptions what I needed. Which was the pregabalin Lyrica, Paracetamol, and morphine tablets (oxycontin I think it was) … no medication for blood clots (orally, such as warfarin or whatever) even though I had been on heparin shots – not even told as much to keep moving around as much as I could. They just said don’t forget to keep up the physio appointments and go to them.

When I got home I tried to move around as much as I could, but with my pain and still worried about collapsing and not being able to get up off the floor I spent the next week or 2 bed ridden, my own fault – it was just easier and less painful to lay there and move as little as possible (so I give into it unfortunately) .

I did manage to go to my physio appointment in the hospital staggering in on my zimmer frame and the physio picking up my zimmer frame and throwing it to the other side of the room says “you wont be needing that any more after I have finished with you” – he had a look at my prescribed medication “Ah, I see you are on Pregabalin Lyrica – Pure Muck! – you need to come off them, but dont come off them immediately , you need to wean off them – the doctor will wean you off them over a 3 week period”.

I went to a doctors outpatient appointment at Sligo hospital and saw the Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon for a checkup and told him I had a pain in my lower right leg which he examined (in hindsight now I reckon it was the start of the blood clot, even though I didn’t think of it at the time) after examination he said it was probably the sciatica , it can travel to both legs.

I didn’t think anything more, but on a Saturday I woke with a terrible dull pain across my chest and hard to catch my breath (still not giving blood clot a second thought), seeing as it was the weekend I thought i would wait until Monday and see the local GP and just get by on paracetamol and Ibuprofen.

On Monday I went to the local GP and she examined me and said ‘can you make your way into the hospital , I think its DVT you have – I will do you a letter to take in with you, go straight to Admissions dept”

I went in there , still not too bad, out of breath still and pain in my chest, they performed a ECG and then done a normal chest x-ray and a few more examinations then in the afternoon a consultant came around to the cubicle and said ‘there are 2 blood clots heading for your heart and lungs and you will have to be admitted” it was a Pulmonary Embolism – there was no room on any other wards, so they wheeled me down on the bed to an Oncology ward with all the poor patients in there with Cancer, I felt a bit of a fraud there was me with just breathing issues and a pain in my chest. They give me oxygen (not the mask, the pipes that fit into your nostril) and told me to keep it on, and administered me some antibiotics (I still don’t know why they gave me antibiotics for PE but there you go, they know best) when I tried to get up to go to the toilet the nurse berated me and said stay where you are, we don’t want the clots to move …. and they could if you move!

The next day I could take my oxygen off , and a consultant came around the ward with a load of trainee doctors and then I was a guinea pig where the trainee doctor had to tap my back and tell the consultant what was hollow and what sounded dense.

The next morning I was cleaning my teeth in the hospital toilet and done a couple of huge coughs and then spat what looked like clotted blood into the sink , it was frightening but then I thought well that must be a good sign.

I still had to stay in a bit longer for tests and they were giving me all kinds of blood tests. I was getting bored and not resting properly and sleeping properly and it was a Friday and they said we want to do another chest x-ray but they are not back in until Monday (or cannot do it until Monday) – so I asked if I could discharge myself – I felt I would be able to rest better at home and get a bit of peace and quiet (and i did) and after a bit of too-ing and fro-ing I was allowed to go home , but i had to promise to go to the x-ray appointment on the Monday.

So i did that, and the consultant said that I would have to take Warfarin and get my INR checked weekly which I did. I was on Warfarin for about a year , Every week I would walk into the INR Clinic in the hospital and felt that a lot of other patients in the waiting room were quite older than me waiting to be seen, and when i would go in to have my INR checked the nurse would say “you seem very young to have had a blood clot!”

After a year of Warfarin the consultant said I could come off the warfarin which was good , at least I didn’t have to be on it for the rest of my life, but he said that if I had any other symptoms to do with Blood Clots or DVT I would have to go back on them – thankfully I didn’t have to.

so as the years have gone on since I was told in the Orthopaedic ward that I was low on Magnesium ( I am aged 60 now ) over these years I have kept on taking the magnesium tablets regularly on a daily basis (its been fascinating to read up actually on how beneficial magnesium supplements are for the body in general) so i would be lying if I said i didnt get any more back aches because I do, and sometimes I am bent over for a couple of days. … but nothing as bad as the Sciatica episode of 2009 when I was admitted with it thanks be to God, and long may it last

– same with the blood clots no more has that happened to me and where I can, when I have had a bad back, I have tried to keep as mobile as I can. It was suggested to me in the past that I could have surgery on those 2 slipped (or is it bulging?) discs but have always declined especially after having all the risks pointed out that the discs are very near to the spinal cord and should anything go wrong or the slightest slip could make me paralysed then I have always declined surgery on the discs. Besides I have heard people who have had the surgery still can have complications straight after surgery or years afterwards so I think I may as well pass on it for as long as I can.

If you have made it this far , thank you ever so much for reading this far and hopefully my experiences of back issues and blood clots may have helped others in some way.

Andy.