Pain can make you short tempered. I deal with sciatica as well and mostly it's an irritant like background noise that is always with me. And then it flares and the pain that radiates from the sciatic nerve encompases my whole body and I just want to curl in a ball and just cry. I'm sorry you're having such a tough time with recovery.
I've been reading up on covid and it appears that it has similarities with feline infectious peritonitis. Both viruses belong to the family coronaviridae. And anyone who has cats probably knows about this horrible disease. It kills cats and it has similar symptoms to covid. The 'wet form' where fluid fills the abdominal cavity so the cat just drowns in its own fluid. And the 'dry' form that just causes severe organ inflammation. I've been reading about some collaboration between the researchers who are studying covid and those studying FIP. One bit of good news on the FIP front, cats who are treated with
remdesivir, the antiviral used for covid respond to treatment and recover.
Back to covid. It appears that covid attacks the mitochondria. The mitochondria is the powerhouse for our cells. In some cases the attack is severe. Researchers don't know if the damage can be reversed. But our body already has the ability to reverse damage and heal. We once thought that spinal cord injuries severe enough to cause paralysis was permanent. Christopher Reeve taught us that was untrue. Before he died, he regained feeling in some of his toes and his fingers and he could feel a breeze across his face.
CoQ10 is the main supplement for the mitochondria. For your sciatica, the amino acid
GABA might help. It's got less side effects than the drugs gabapentin or lyrica which are now being used for nerve pain. GABA goes right to the GABA receptors in the brain. Lyrica and gabapentin simply try to hold on to the GABA circulating in the body and they block certain nutrients like your b vitamins, specifically thiamine, biotin, folic acid and vitamin D. My daughter takes GABA at night to help calm her brain and get to sleep. The taste is not too bad, considering some of the amino acids are sulfur based and taste horrible. It's a tad sour. She takes it by 1/4 teaspoon in a bit of water and just knocks it back. You might find it better if you take it throughout the day. Start low, though because it can be sedating. It comes bulk in powder and in capsule. We use so much of it, I buy the powder because it's cheaper. The fat soluble form of thiamine,
benfotiamine can help with nerve pain as can b12. But thiamine crosses the blood brain barrier, benfotiamine supposedly cannot so if you're gonna try this, take
thiamine and benfotiamine together.
There is also indications that covid does a number on the adrenals -- hence the weakness, and overwhelming fatigue. I've read 2nd hand information (nothing verified) that some folks with long covid improve with a short course of corticosteroids aka prednisone. Corticosteroids are used for adrenal insufficiency, ie depleted adrenals or for the adrenal autoimmune disorder, Addison's disease, where the immune system attacks the adrenal glands. So it makes sense, to me anyway that supporting the adrenals may be needed for long covid. For a mild approach,
licorice helps the cortisol produced by the adrenals to stick around longer. Make sure you get
potassium in your diet as licorice can deplete potassium (some easy ways: coconut water, V8 or Tomato Juice (read the labels), sweet potatoes, bananas, white potatoes with skin. Try the licorice tincture or capsules. The hormone
pregnenolone (available OTC here in the US from Amazon) is considered the 'mother hormone' which the body creates from cholesterol. The adrenal hormones come from pregnenolone. So it makes sense to try adding pregnenolone to the mix. Especially since pregnenolone production decreases as we age. There are 'adrenal supporting' herbal supplements out there, but most of them out there lower cortisol levels. I ran across this article about pregnenolone raising cortisol levels this weekend.
https://www.diagnostechs.com/2015/04/07/a-foundational-approach-to-adrenal-restoration/#:~:text=Pregnenolone%20usually%20works%20to%20rai se,to%201mg%2Fkg%20per%20day.
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Pregnenolone usually works to raise cortisol, although it can raise other hormone levels as well. If used for more than a couple of months, checking all the downstream hormones for dysregulation is warranted. Dosing of pregnenolone to raise cortisol levels is usually up to 1mg/1kg (bodyweight) per day
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Taking a 24hr cortisol saliva test would give you an idea about your adrenals and would be a good idea to pursue. Because it will tell you if you have any abnormal dips or rises in the 24 hour period so you would know to treat the abnormal low dips with licorice or pregnenolone and the abnormal rises with something that would lower cortisol like ashwagandha, holy basil or phosphatidylcholine, just to name a few.
Bone broth and collagen broth would probably feel soothing and nourishing to you too. But my gut tells me that thiamine, CoQ10 and adrenal support are probably going to be key to recovery. There are sites out there for mitochondrial disorders/diseases that have supplement lists to go along with coQ10, so I would check them out too.
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