u/Square-Love-1820

I’ve been dealing with this new burning pain that goes down my legs, along with my lower back pain. What’s really frustrating is that I didn’t have this burning sensation like this before the surgery.
I’ve tried talking to my family about it, but their response is usually something like, “Just go for a morning walk, you had surgery, why are you still not okay?”
I know they’re trying to help, but it feels like they don’t really understand that surgery doesn’t mean you just wake up fine and everything goes back to normal. And honestly, it gets really frustrating when the only advice I keep hearing is “just walk more.”
I even started PT after surgery because I wanted to recover properly. My doctor had said I could just do the exercises at home since I’m not really into sports, but I thought having a physiotherapist would help me stay on track and recover more safely.
The problem is, even simple movement can trigger this burning pain for me. So when people say “just go for a walk in the morning,” it’s hard, because they’re not feeling what I’m feeling.
I’m really trying to do everything right—following rehab, staying active, doing what I’m supposed to—but I’m honestly exhausted. Some days feel like I’m getting better, and then suddenly the burning pain comes back and I feel like I’m back at square one.
On top of the physical pain, I’ve also been feeling really overwhelmed mentally. I’m 25, and I was supposed to be starting my career and building my life, but I had to turn down some good opportunities because I thought I should focus on recovering first. Now I’m still dealing with pain after surgery, and it’s honestly scary. I keep worrying that I might not fully recover or be able to move forward the way I planned.
Some days I feel really low and even a bit hopeless about the future, and it’s hard to deal with that mentally while also managing the physical pain.
Has anyone else gone through something like this after surgery—especially new burning or radiating pain that gets worse with movement? How did you cope with it?

I don’t but really know how to write this properly, so I’m just going to write it the way it comes to my mind.
The first time I tried weed was honestly one of the strangest experiences of my life. Everything felt different. It was like I was seeing the world in another dimension. It took the edge off life for a while and I could just chill.
But even then I always knew weed could be addictive. I never really made it my personality or told myself that weed was my thing. I never thought of it as something good that I needed in my life.
And at that time, I was actually pretty happy.
For almost two years I was going to boxing every single day. I had a good physique, I was active and I had something that I genuinely enjoyed doing.
Then an old injury came back and I had to stop sports.
I thought it would just be for a while.
I didn’t know how much that would affect me.
Around the same time I also started becoming really conscious about my health.
One day I came home after walking my dog. My mom was checking her blood pressure and I thought, okay let me check mine too.
I wasn’t even expecting anything.
But it was slightly high.
Looking back, it could have been because I had just walked and I’d also smoked a cigarette during the walk. It wasn’t even that high, but for some reason that number stayed in my head.
I started thinking, what if something is wrong with me?
What if weed did something to my body?
What if smoking did something?
What if there’s something wrong with my heart?
My mom wasn’t even that worried. She said it could be stress or something temporary.
But once that thought gets into your head, it’s hard to get it out.
The next year I had an operation and they were checking my blood pressure from time to time. They noticed it was often a little high and told me to see a physician.
I went through some tests and was basically told there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with my body. I did have hypothyroidism and started medication for that, but there wasn’t some major problem with my heart or anything like that.
The physician told me I should probably see a psychiatrist because anxiety or depression could be playing a role.
And honestly, looking back, I was already anxious as hell.
I was studying really hard for academics but whenever I actually sat in an exam sometimes my mind would just go completely blank.
I knew the stuff.
I had studied.
But suddenly I couldn’t think.
There were also other health problems going on and my back was becoming another huge issue.
Then I started having panic attacks.
I remember one time I was literally just standing in my room. Nothing was happening. And suddenly my heart started racing like crazy.
I checked my blood pressure and it was around 150/87.
I thought something was seriously wrong with me.
Eventually I went to a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with clinical depression. The anxiety and panic attacks were considered part of it.
I thought okay, now I’ll get treatment and things will become normal.
But three months into treatment I was still having panic attacks.
That’s when I finally told my psychiatrist that I used to smoke weed and was still occasionally using it.
He told me to stop.
So I stopped.
I’ve been off weed for around half a year now.
And at first I thought this was the answer.
I genuinely thought:
Maybe all of this is because of weed. Maybe once I quit, my brain will recover and I’ll finally feel normal.
But here I am, roughly six months later.
I haven’t touched weed.
And I’m still anxious almost every day.
My heart still races. Sometimes I’ll see my heart rate around 102–120 and even though I know anxiety can cause that, my brain immediately goes back to thinking something is wrong with me.
That’s when I started thinking maybe weed wasn’t actually the whole problem.
Maybe I blamed weed because I needed something to blame.
Because if weed was the problem, then quitting it should have fixed me.
But it didn’t.
And one of the weirdest things is that people can actually see the anxiety on me.
I’ll be trying my hardest to be happy and chill and someone will look at me and say,
“You look tense.”
Or,
“You look depressed.”
And I’m thinking, bro, I’m literally trying my hardest to look normal.
I’m trying to be happy.
I’m trying to relax.
I’m trying to enjoy things.
But somehow it still shows on my face.
Sometimes I wonder if I somehow raised my own demons.
I don’t mean that I caused my depression or anxiety. I don’t know if that’s even how it works.
I just mean that I’ve spent so much of my life thinking about what I’m supposed to become.
We humans are always told to do something great.
Be successful.
Make money.
Build something.
Become somebody.
Stand out from everyone else.
And I used to think like that too.
But I think there is something really fucked up about that way of thinking when things don’t go according to plan.
Because when you think you’re supposed to become something great, failure doesn’t just feel like failure.
It feels like you’ve failed yourself.
Like you’re falling behind the person you were supposed to become.
And then you start thinking about the future all the time.
What am I going to become?
Where will I be?
Why am I not where I thought I’d be?
And then you look at the past.
What happened to me?
Why did things change?
Why can’t I just be the person I was before?
And somewhere between thinking about the past and worrying about the future, you completely miss the fucking present.
I don’t even know if I’m explaining this properly.
Maybe I’m just writing nonsense.
But something I’ve realized recently is that I don’t really want greatness anymore.
I don’t want to be some incredibly successful person.
I don’t want to shine in the crowd.
I don’t want to be the darkest person in it either.
I don’t want everyone to know who I am.
I don’t want some huge life.
I think I just want to be calm.
That’s it.
I want to be the kind of person who is just there.
Not sad.
Not trying to prove anything.
Not overly proud.
Not constantly worried.
Just… peaceful.
Sometimes I see a little toddler playing somewhere in the neighborhood and I honestly envy them.
They’re not thinking about whether they’re successful.
They’re not thinking about whether they failed.
They’re not planning their career.
They’re not thinking about what happened last year.
They’re not worrying about what will happen ten years from now.
They’re just there.
They see something and they enjoy it.
They taste something and enjoy the taste.
They play.
They laugh.
They get upset.
Then five minutes later they’re fine.
They don’t need a reason to exist.
They’re just experiencing whatever is happening right now.
And honestly, that’s what I want.
I don’t want to succeed or fail.
I don’t want to be rich or famous.
I don’t want to be better than everyone.
I just want to be able to sit somewhere and actually feel okay.
I’ve also started looking at people differently.
Before, if I saw a rich guy walking down the street I’d notice his expensive watch, his car, his clothes.
If I saw someone begging on the street I’d notice the cup in their hand.
Now I sometimes look at both of them and wonder something completely different.
Does this person have peace inside them?
Because you can have an expensive watch and still be completely miserable.
And someone who has almost nothing might have some tiny moment of peace that I can’t even imagine.
Sometimes I see people who have much less than me and wonder how they can still look calm.
And then I look at myself.
I have a roof over my head.
I have food.
I have a warm dinner at night.
I have things that someone else might pray for.
And yet I can lie in bed at night and still feel like I can’t find even five minutes of calm inside my own head.
That’s a really strange realization.
We romanticize depression sometimes too.
Like when you see a depressed character in a movie, or listen to Radiohead, there can be something beautiful about the sadness.
From the outside it almost looks poetic.
But when you’re actually that person?
It’s not poetic.
It’s fucking horrible.
I’ve honestly forgotten what it feels like to wake up and have sunlight feel like a warm hug from your parents.
I don’t remember the last time an evening felt like a calm breeze.
I don’t remember the last time nighttime felt like peaceful dreams.
Now sometimes the sunlight feels radioactive.
The evening feels chaotic.
And at night it feels like the demons are going to rise.
And the worst part is that I’m still trying.
I’m trying really hard to be happy.
I’m trying to be chill.
I’m trying to enjoy things.
I’m trying to get my old personality back.
I’m trying to stop checking every little thing happening inside my body.
I’m trying not to care about every heartbeat.
I’m trying not to think about my blood pressure.
I’m trying not to constantly wonder what’s wrong with me.
And sometimes I’m just tired.
Not tired like I need sleep.
Tired of fighting my own mind.
That’s why I don’t even think I want the things I used to want anymore.
I don’t want to become extraordinary.
I don’t want to prove anything.
I don’t want to be remembered by everyone.
I don’t want to win some imaginary competition against the rest of the world.
I just want to be okay.
I want to wake up and feel the morning.
I want to eat food and actually enjoy it.
I want to walk outside without thinking about my heart.
I want to sit somewhere in the evening and feel the breeze.
I want to go to sleep without my brain starting another fucking meeting about everything that could go wrong.
I just want peace.
Maybe that’s not enough for some people.
But right now, it sounds like everything to me.
I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this.
Did you quit weed thinking it was the reason for all your problems, only to realize months later that the deeper problem was anxiety or depression?
Did you ever reach a point where you stopped wanting success and just wanted peace?
Where you stopped caring about being somebody and just wanted to be able to enjoy being alive?
And if you got through it, did you ever feel normal again?
Because that’s honestly what I’m looking for now.
Not greatness.
Not success.
Not being special.
Just that simple feeling of being alive and not fighting yourself every second.
I think I just want to learn how to be here.

Hey guys, I’m 25 and currently 13 weeks post-op from lumbar disc surgery. I’ve been doing recovery PT again for about a month, but I’m still dealing with back pain along with radiating, heating/burning pain in my leg.
For some background, I had back pain for around 5–6 years, but I never really looked into it as a disc herniation problem. In 2024, I finally took the pain seriously and got an MRI, which showed a disc herniation.
For a long time, the pain would improve after about a week of rest. I was still able to do pretty much every activity, and importantly, the pain never traveled down my leg. However, sometime last year, the pain started radiating into my leg. I tried PT, but it didn’t really help.
I eventually had another MRI, and interestingly, the herniation had actually gotten smaller, but I was still having shooting/radiating pain down my leg. Because the symptoms weren’t improving, I decided to see a spine surgeon. I was advised that surgery would solve the problem, so I went ahead with it.
Now I’m 13 weeks post-op, and honestly, I’m getting frustrated and anxious because I’m still experiencing back pain and a new heating/burning sensation that radiates into my leg.
The thing that worries me most is that the burning sensation wasn’t present before surgery, and sometimes I now feel pain going into my other leg as well, which was never the case before surgery. Before surgery, my pain was more of a regular back/leg pain rather than this burning or nerve-like sensation.
I’ve brought these symptoms up with both my surgeon and my PT. They’ve told me that this can be part of the recovery process and that recovery isn’t always linear, but I’m still anxious and worried because I expected things to be significantly better by this point.
Some days are better, while other days the pain suddenly flares up, which makes it difficult to know whether I’m actually progressing.
For those who have gone through something similar:
Did anyone else still have burning/radiating nerve pain around 3 months after surgery?
Did you experience new or different nerve sensations after surgery that weren’t present before?
Did anyone have symptoms occasionally appear in the opposite leg?
When did your nerve pain actually start improving?
Did PT cause temporary flare-ups for you?
At what point did you start feeling that surgery had actually made a significant difference?
I’d really appreciate hearing from people who had a similar recovery. I know everyone heals differently, but I’m trying to understand whether what I’m experiencing can genuinely still be part of normal recovery or whether I should be pushing for another evaluation.
I’m honestly just tired of the uncertainty and the constant fluctuations.