When you have Sciatic Nerve pain in your 20s....

It all started from a very silly habit: bad posture. Where the edge of the chair cuts into my lumbar spine, thinking it’s a cool way of relaxing. Just a brief intro although I can’t explain it as good as doctors, sciatica nerve pain generally comes from a pressed nerve. And that nerve is the largest nerve of the body running down your thigh. In short it’s caused due to any wear and tear your lumbar spine goes through.

I wake up one day and couldn’t get out of the bed easily. My left leg felt really heavy like it’s not even a part of my body. When I try to move, this leg would give me a striking pain in the lower back. It was alarming so I visit my doctor that night, and he told me there’s nothing to worry. The extremely-good-looking-shocking-young doctor tells me, “At your age sciatic pain recovers itself within weeks”. I gladly believed him. He wrote me some pain killers and I walk out relieved.

In the beginning those painkillers helped me follow my workout routine just fine. Unfortunately I wake up next day with worse pain than ever! Then it becomes a vicious cycle. Painkillers would make me numb, workouts gets easy and next morning I have worse pain than yesterday. Day three: I couldn’t complete my workout even with those painkillers. After accepting I can’t do it, I lied on the floor and started crying.

That physical helplessness was turning everything black and white. One by one I started to give up on all that I loved to do. Things would appear so out of reach and distant that I'm not even trying anymore. That weekend I get a call for from my bestie, convincing me to go out shopping. I declined abruptly. On which she snarled, “If you won’t go Tayyaba! I swear I’d NEVER talk to you again!” On the other end of the phone, I become quiet analyzing if she really means it. To my silence she asks laughing “Kamini! Did you just stop talking to me already?”  So yeah she convinced me to go after all that serious threat. Thanks to her, it helped me immensely.

However the anxiety that comes from feeling old in your mid-twenties is suicidal. I gave up on stupid painkillers that made me feel more numb than I already felt. And that wasn’t the only BAD decision made. I started to cut out on important meals to compensate for my inability to exercise/stretch. The pressure of the belief “I am fitness motivation myself” was inevitable.  Later it turns out the cute doctor was right. I recovered. Sadly I invited on me another evil disease: general weakness from that poor diet.

I am recovering now ALHAMDULILLAH or else I wouldn’t be here. Take my bad decision as a lesson; never ever miss meals thinking it will keep you fit. Sure you won’t gain weight but at the cost of good health. You can’t keep your army out and still believe you’d survive.

Arright, emma go take my Multivitamins now.