Sciatica leg tingling causing sensory overload??

[SnapAndFartAllDayLong]

I was diagnosed with sciatica today after having numbness and tingling in left leg for a few weeks. It's not painful per se but the sensation is driving me insane. It's hard to describe, it's like that sensation you get when fingernails are dragged down a chalkboard, that feeling it gives you is what I'm experiencing. I'm also neurodiverse so don't know if this is a sensory issue or what! All I know is it's driving me insane and making my teeth itch 😫I've taken co-codimal and ibuprofen and it's still there. Has anyone else experienced this and got any tips before I slowly go insane. Been very tearful this evening as had enough 😭 many thanks!

I don’t think it’s a sensory issue other than you’re maybe less tolerant of the feeling than others if that makes sense but I think the actual feeling you’re describing is just how nerve pain can feel to anyone. Normal painkillers often don’t do a lot for neuropathic pain (nerve pain) like sciatica. Ask your GP if you can try a neuropathic painkiller on prescription like pregabalin, gabapentin or amitriptyline.

I'm on Gabapentin a nerve blocker.

Is it constant? It sounds similar to restless leg syndrome how you described it.

Manual therapy of some kind (like osteopathy), to reduce the pressure on the disc

Tens machine might work if you can tolerate the sensation.

Have you been given an exercises, OP?

if not, google exercises for sciatica. Some are very good and might help.

Careful though, it depends what causes the sciatica. Mine is caused by a birth defect essentially and the exercises physios insisted on made it 100 times worse.

Thank you! I will def ask Dr tomorrow as even though it's not painful the sensation is killing me!

It’s nerve pain.

no-one likes it

go to the docs and ask for amytriptyline or similar to deal with nerve pain,

I find heat helps.

Thank you everyone I've never experienced nerve pain before and you have all put my mind to rest! I am booked into physio at end of the month and going to look into a chiropractor tomorrow as I think it's a trapped nerve.

I shall ring Dr's tomorrow to see if they will give me some nerve pain meds

I have this and I’m currently pregnant so can’t even take anything! I actually have also had it before when I was a bit heavier and it went away completely when I lost some weight. Hope you don’t mind me suggesting that as I couldn’t believe it just stopped after losing just a stone. I get a pins and needles feeling and my thigh is sensitive to touch. At night it’s actually quite painful when I swap onto that side. It’s also only my left thigh. I found out it was called Meralgia paresthetica. Apparently it’s a different nerve to sciatica but what you’re describing sounds similar.

Oh no I hope you manage to find some sort of comfort! I think I've trapped a nerve from work/exercise as I have a physical job that uses repetitive movement on that leg 🙄 let's see what the physio says!