Sciatica Says "Sit down."

So I've had back issues for about a dozen years. I played intramural football in college. It was full contact with the pads and a bunch of top notch players who could have played varsity at other schools. That describes them, not me. I'm the guy who got to play against/with the talented bunch.

Then I spent a year in Italy with my inherent inability to "under-pack" I consistently carried 40 to 50 lb packs across Italy and continent of Europe as the opportunity arose. These things contributes to a couple of herniated discs, and the occasional pinched sciatica nerve.

It's been a couple years since the last flare up, however, my 2 year old and my 10 month old was playing "climb Mount Daddy" and, while in his wobble-and-fall-forward stage, aimed with his forehead and landed on those pinched vertebrae sending the nerve into twitchiness.

What's a Sciatica you may ask? (I assume you did... ; )

The term sciatica describes the symptoms of leg pain and possibly tingling, numbness or weakness that travels from the low back through the buttock and down the large sciatic nerve in the back of the leg. The vast majority of people who experience sciatica get better with time (usually a few weeks or months) and find pain relief with non-surgical treatment. For others, however, sciatica can be severe and debilitating.

The clinical diagnosis of sciatica is referred to as a "radiculopathy", which means simply that a disc has protruded from its normal position in the vertebral column and is putting pressure on the radicular nerve (nerve root) in the lower back, which forms part of the sciatic nerve.
An important thing to understand is that sciatica is a symptom of a problem—of something compressing or irritating the nerve roots that comprise the sciatic nerve—rather than a medical diagnosis or medical disorder in an of itself. This is an important distinction because it is the underlying diagnosis (vs. the symptoms of sciatica) that often needs to be treated in order to relieve sciatic nerve pain. Common causes of sciatica are a lumbar herniated disc, spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease or spondylolisthesis.

Lots of words to tell me I need to stretch a lot before I try to swing a club at that conference on Monday... Ouch!