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roy103 avatar

chronic posterior lateral glute pain

Bones, Joints & Muscles | Last Active: Nov 23, 2025 | Replies (15)

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I am sorry for your frustration and PAIN. Those of us here know and empathize, right @heyjoe415 ? We've been through it! My journey was 20 years before pain relieving surgeries started. Gotta go through the motions....
First - you have to figure out if your pain is localized or referred. That is critical.
Then that directs the next step.
Early on I was diagnosed with similar things. Eventually I needed my hips replaced, then by lumbar.
I think you need to find doctors who will work together to agree on a "plan of care." Without that, they just do isolated things with only temporary success.
You should know that MRI's don't reveal everything about needing hip or spine surgeries. You should know that bad SI joints, piriformis dysfunction (my two troublesome areas in addition!) sometimes rear their head and totally screw up a clear diagnosis! You should try several hip/spine doctors and have some good pain management doctors on your team. It's about creating a team going forward. I had some very successful RFA's along my facet joint (heat, not pulse), which alleviated pain for 15 years. Also, try shoe inserts to see if you get some relief at the hip joint and find a GREAT MFR therapist! Mine doesn't accept insurance, but they isolate your problems and will give AMAZING insight! Botox is a great help if you have muscles that are in spasm and put pressure on other areas because the muscle/muscle group is in constant tension. After all of my surgeries, I can still get a tight IT band pulling on my hip. I can still get sciatica because I've sat too long (tax season). But for the most part, they are temporary, and I deal with them in short order when they arise. Start with the orthopedic doctors and rule out corrective surgery, then you can move to how to correct the muscle groups and inflammation that is arising. Also, take into account your genes. If I tried to hard to do too much I'd cause a lot of inflammatory reaction. I ended up with gout and osteoarthritis. Muscles wasted during perimenopause. I just followed the genetics of those before me. There are some great medications which allowed me to get back to exercising and keeping everything tip top.

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Replies to "I am sorry for your frustration and PAIN. Those of us here know and empathize, right..."

Hi Lorie,

Oh yes, we are very familiar with pain, especially in the joints and in, or caused by, the lower back.

You bring up an extremely important difference here:
"First - you have to figure out if your pain is localized or referred. That is critical."

A lot of people don't understand that almost all pain from sciatica is referred, the source is the sciatic nerves in the lumbar spine being pinched (by osteoarthritis, spinal canal narrowing or stenosis, curving of the spine to scoliosis, and on and on).

Local pain is just that, local to the place where you feel the pain.

Anyway, thanks for bringing that up.

(Finally, after years of skepticism, I tried acupuncture while on a cruise two weeks ago. My lower back is very tight ever and I got immediate relief. I had two more sessions on board, and will continue them back home. And Medicare Part B covers acupuncture for lower back pain/stiffness, so Medicare Supplement and Medicare Advantage need to cover it as well.)

Joe