On The Mend Again – BionicOldGuy

It’s been a week since I wrote about my failure when I gained more confidence and started exercising more. This time I’ve been careful on my way back. Now I’m almost back to where I was before I went back. This time I will be very careful not to overdo it. I can ride for at least 30 minutes at a time without pain which is fun and relaxing. I can reach the beautiful places around here in a 30-minute drive,

I can also do better in my physical therapy. I can’t say that it is painless, but I have learned the important point of “centralization” by reading about it: when you have sciatica, the pain comes from somewhere and then it refers to the bottom of the leg. For me this center point is the middle of my hips, maybe piriformis muscles. It’s okay if you feel pain in the midsection while you’re doing PT, but it shouldn’t make the leg worse, because this means that the sciatica nerve is getting stressed by the exercise. I have been doing well in the last week or so following this principle.

I had an MRI of my hip because I will be seeing an orthopedic specialist in a week. That was painful. For some reason it still hurts to sleep on my back for long periods of time, even with a pillow under my knees. But the useful information from this is that the pain came from my left side IF included. Until now I thought I had piriformis syndrome (now also known as deep gluteal pain). If my SI connector is on there is an extra PT exercise I have to do. So I’ve added what I hope will help. I have also carefully started to add exercises, such as glute bridges and clamshells with bands, which are very important in the long term to strengthen the piriformis muscle and stabilize the SI joint.