If this helps anyone... I've been told that the key to me kicking this injury will be whether or not I can clear out the old scar tissue around the nerve, and in the muscles the nerve innervates. So, I've continued doing all the traditional physical therapy-type exercises I've been given in the past, and have added in nerve gliding exercises, but ultimately, progress will be made when the scar tissue gets blown away. The scar tissue is made of adhesions that are like glue and cause the nerve to stick, rather than glide and function properly. Still trying to completely wrap my head around this, but that's how it was explained to me...
Anyway, so, to clear out the scar tissue:
*I'm doing 10:00/day of combo stim and ultrasound across the piriformis and sciatic trigger points. This should be pretty intense--- really get the muscle thumping. It should be uncomfortable, but not painful.
*I've had a couple massage appts, both deep tissue and ART to grind away on the piriformis.
***BUT BY FAR THE BEST treatment I've had since all this came to light in Feb, is with a DMS machine--- Deep Muscle Stimulator, hold the jokes. Believe me, I was skeptical at first, thinking it was just another gimmick. But, I have to say I am a big fan now. I got IMMEDIATE relief from the first session. For example, I get this weird tightness in the midfoot of my bad leg. It feels like something is caught, like a bone spur, or that I need to crack my foot. But, my doc said this feeling is because of the nerve problem. It is chronic and I feel like when running, my left foot strikes the ground like a club foot. I do not get smooth movement out of that foot. Well, my very first run about 90min after the first DMS treatment, my foot tightness was gone and I could plant my foot smoothly. It felt just as normal as the right. It had intermittantly returned off and on, but now after repeat DMS treatments, I have not had the foot tightness in over 2 weeks @80mpw. I'm not sure how to describe it, but I could feel this deep resonating in my hip when the DMS machine went over tight spots in my piriformis and sciatic trigger points. The sciatic nerve lies pretty far beneath the piriformis and is difficult for manual therapists to reach--- either through deep tissue, ART, etc. But this DMS machine can hit it---- it felt uncomfortable, but tolerable. It vibrates at high frequencies equivalent to sound waves so that the waves can travel deep into the muscles. I have extremely poor external rotation on my left (bad) hip. For example, if I lay on my stomach with my knees bent with my feet together in the air, I can barely bend out my left ankle away from the right. After the very first DMS treatment, I went from about 10degrees of rotation, to about 40degrees. It immediately loosened up that hip.
http://www.d-m-s.com/products.php