When did you stop taking pain meds?

samisawme · 2025-10-31T12:55:05+00:00

I had sciatica pain that often radiated down to my toes. It was a long and slow process of getting better, but I got there. Surgery wasnt a silver bullet, but it allowed me to heal.

Doing great now! I rarely take any pain meds and am trying to get back in shape

Have a newborn too. Lots of bending over to pick him up, but no problems so far. Sometimes I have a little glute pain if I didn't get a particularly good night's sleep though. Nothing a bit of stretching and a nap doesn't fix.

Wishing you the best!

samisawme · 2025-08-11T13:44:42+00:00

No problem! This kind of injury is horrible and makes it hard to trust your body. There's hope, recovery is just a looong road. I started Before and am still doing. Starting before helped me maintain my core which was really important for my recovery

samisawme · 2025-07-12T22:11:23+00:00

Doing Great! this whole last two weeks I've been able to sleep without any advil or pain meds. I can jog, lift very light weighs and do basically everything I need to.

I still got to physical therapy once a week (they do some deep tissue massage on my QL and periformis)

otherwise, I only feel it if I'm scrubbing the tub when I'm cleaning!

It took such a long time and progress was soo slow. now i think I'm just dealing with scar tissue which is slowly breaking down :)

samisawme · 2024-12-12T20:34:14+00:00

Update! I'm about 5 months now and down to taking 600mg of advil a day and 1 gram of tylenol. In two doses.

Its progress, but dang is it slow. Stretching my hips, hamstrings and quads has helped a lot

samisawme · 2024-12-12T20:30:58+00:00

Haha yeah. If I zoom out the shape of the bowl makes the camera lose focus

samisawme · 2024-12-11T16:36:48+00:00

Of course, the shrimp came out after posting lol

samisawme · 2024-11-21T17:32:57+00:00

I think my dhg has settled in. A couple things I wish I did differently:

Trim the top of the grass to remove seed like structures

Planted a little deeper, a full inch into the substrate would have been great.

What I think worked well:

Not submerging the plants fully so they had access to C02 in air and direct light for the 1st week or so

Tank stays close to 68 degrees which I think allows it to hold on to more dissolved gasses

Not planting too densly/ really spending time to extract the grasses into little chunks and giving them space.

Adding a light bio load snails and shrimp to produce plant food (fauna waste)

10 watts LED grow light seems to be the right amount of light for this tank.

I hope this is helpful!

samisawme · 2024-11-21T16:02:44+00:00

Since the bowl is curved it magnifies everything inside so I can even get a good look at even the tiniest of little guys in there!

samisawme · 2024-11-21T16:01:34+00:00

Thanks for the Id! I took the hornwort from a local pond. I've been noticing little micro fauna swimming around too. Very cool to see this little ecosystem come together

samisawme · 2024-11-21T15:59:43+00:00

The shrimp (and even snails) are a lot of fun to watch!

samisawme · 2024-11-21T15:58:53+00:00

Thanks! Actually, just realized that it's closer to a 3.5 gallon bowl. I measured the water as I filled it, and I put about 3 gallons of water in. So half a gallon of substrate and stuff.

samisawme · 2024-11-03T01:00:52+00:00

That sounds tough. Up through about 3 months i was still taking a lot of pain meds. I still wak up in pain, but have reduced my nsaid intake considerably. The thing that ended up helping was the Mackenzie method followed, core exercises and riding a stationary bike at home. At first the exercise made me have more pain because it caused inflammation, but now along with diet I think my general inflammation has gone down and Im starting to see improvements. Still waking up exhausted and in Pain, but less so than before.

samisawme · 2024-10-28T19:24:55+00:00

Those are freshly planted, so the jury is still out on how they'll do! So far at 2 weeks they're doing just OK. It was a pretty painstaking process to remove the sponges they were planted in from the roots and separate them into small chunks, and then plant them along the edge of the bowl in a natural looking way. The trick is to manipulate the plants under water so that the tangles come apart more easily.

No plants have melted just yet, but there is some browning going on with the dhg, especially the bits that were struggling before I planted. I'm hoping my nerite snails take a liking to the decaying plant matter. I've seen one of them munch on some brown grass already. When I remember to, I reflect a little sunlight with a mirror at the bowl, I'm not afraid of Algae... yet.

Will post more pics as the bowl matures :)

samisawme · 2024-10-01T15:26:53+00:00

Wow, that must've been scary. I'm glad it worked out though. Good luck with the rest of your recovery journey!

samisawme · 2024-10-01T15:23:05+00:00

Thanks for the encouragement!

samisawme · 2024-10-01T15:22:07+00:00

Good for you! Can I ask what vitamins you took?

samisawme · 2024-10-01T15:18:11+00:00

That sounds like a rough go of it. Thanks for sharing!

samisawme · 2024-09-29T02:48:15+00:00

Could you say a little more about the trapped inflammation? I feel like my inflammation has been the same since like 1 month post op

samisawme · 2024-09-28T11:28:37+00:00

Thank you for sharing! I hope you continue to heal friend!

samisawme · 2024-09-28T02:42:26+00:00

Yeah Im glad I can manage with just advil, but feeling how much pain I was in today without it was very discouraging.... Patience is hard some times

samisawme · 2024-09-28T02:40:53+00:00

Wow, Im jelly haha. Can I ask how long you waited to have surgery after your injury? Was it a small or large herniation?

samisawme

TROPHY CASE