Picture of Fran when she had Sciatica

Sciatica By: Frances M. McCrory-Meservy November 1982-November 1992

In November 1982 I fell on the stairs, broke my tailbone again and as I found out later exploded the bottom disc in my spine. As a result I had what is known as Sciatica. I was in pain from the bottom of my spine, through my left hip and down my left leg into my left foot. The bottom of my left foot was numb in spots that made it feel like I was walking on marbles.

I went to my family doctor and he put me on a pain pill and a muscle relaxer. I also saw a good chiropractor until Feb. 1983 to no avail. My family Doctor sent me to a neurosurgeon because my left leg curled and I could no longer straighten it out. I was on crutches.

Dr. Hughes said I had a perforated bottom disc and the 4 above it were slipped. He recommended surgery. He repaired the slipped discs. He found that the bottom disc had exploded and jammed the sciatic nerve. He had to remove the pieces with tweezers and the surgery took two hours longer than expected. He also found that my back had tried to repair itself. I was building a bridge to fuse the vertebrae open. Problem was it had pierced the sciatic nerve. My sciatic nerve was permanently damaged. He cleaned the jagged calcium build up out, took a piece of bone from my hip and fused the two vertebrae open.

For three months my sciatic nerve had been screaming in pain but my brain was not getting the message because the nerve was pinched off. After surgery it was no longer pinched. My brain heard the nerve loud and clear. It felt like someone hit me with a very large hammer from the bottom of my spine into the bottom of my foot (if you ever hit your finger with a hammer, you know the pain I am talking about). Thank God for good painkiller.

I was in the hospital for two weeks. I was not allowed out of bed for the first week. For 6 weeks after that if I sat up more than 5 minutes, I would break out in a cold sweat and start shaking from head to toe (a sign that your body is going into shock from pain). Two days before I was released from the hospital, I asked my Doctor for a walker so I could walk to the bathroom and back. Each time I walked my body went into shock and the nurse would give me a shot for pain. The muscles in my left leg had atrophied and I was determined to get them back.

My Doctor gave me a prescription for 100 mg Demerol to take home so I could take one each time right after I walked (so I could get use of my leg back) and one at bedtime (so I could get some sleep). After a month they took me off the pain pills and gave me a muscle relaxer to take after each walk.

When Al got home from work each afternoon, he would take me for a walk. We started one house away and after 3 months I could go around the block. I could not have done it if my doctor had not given me strong pain pills to take after each walk.

My family doctor put me on Limbatrol {part Elival 25-mg (antidepressant) and part Librium 10 mg (nerve pill)} for 2 months after surgery so I would not go into a postoperative depression.

When I quit taking Limbatrol, the pain got worse. Dr. DeWitt thought it was Librium that was helping since it was a nerve that was causing the pain. He put me on 10 mg Librium and it did not lower the pain. He put me on 25 mg Elival at bedtime and it lowered the pain to a tolerable degree.

Dr. DeWitt was on the board of the University of Texas Medical Center and had them do time trials on Elival in relation to nerve damage. It worked and is a common prescription for people who have any kind of nerve damage including people who have peripheral neuropathy caused by Diabetes. Good came out of my suffering.

I got my leg muscles back. It took 6 months; but I was still in tolerable pain if I took Elival and kept my emotions under control. The muscles in my left calf never stopped moving and I would get knots in deep thigh muscles if I overdid.

God used sciatica to teach me emotional self-control. If I got upset or excited about anything, the pain would be excruciating and I would have to take a pain pill and a muscle relaxer. My Doctors said it would always be that way because there is no way to repair a damaged nerve. More good came from the suffering. 

Rom 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

2 Pet 1:2-9 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.