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via BlackDoctor:
I was a freshman in the Dance Department at The University of Illinois when I found myself stuck on the ballet studio floor unable to move because of an extreme pain in my lower back. My teachers and classmates tried to help me up, but the pain was so bad that I had to be rushed to the nearest hospital. I had been dealing with this back pain for a while before I got to this point, doing as much as I could to deal with it. I had been to several physicians, to see my physical therapist, and to our campus medical center to get some answers, but nothing they did or said really helped because the pain that I was feeling went deeper than I was able to describe.
Sciatica is tough to diagnose and even tougher to reach. It isn’t necessarily a medical condition (which is why it may have been so difficult for me to get answers), but a symptom of an underlying condition having to do with a number of back problems, including herniated disks, spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease, and in more rare cases can be caused by a tumor or disease.
Someone dealing with sciatica, as a result, would experience inflammation and a shooting, sometimes numbing, pain down the leg, which starts at the lower back and travels through the hips and buttocks. The pain can be mild, infrequent and bothersome, but it can also be excruciating, constant and crippling. The pain that one would experience is triggered by the sciatic nerve being irritated or compressed at its point of origin, in the lumbar spine.
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