I was there a year ago and I take care of these for a living. If there is some good news, it’s that it eventually calms down. My pain was so bad and I couldn’t find any comfortable position without 8-9/10 pain that I eventually went in to the emergency room. Morphine knocked it down and I went home. I was mortified the pain was going to come back. I ended up taking some oral steroids and gabapentin (nerve pain medicine) that were prescribed by a physician (a coworker). They aren’t available OTC.

Sometimes the pain comes down but doesn’t go away. Sometimes it stays at a high level. Sometimes it completely goes away (that’s most common).

You can take things like Ibuprofen 800 mg and Tylenol 1000 mg and you can overlap those. You can try to use heat and ice. You can use whatever topical you want. TENS is fine. I would have bought the whole back aisle at CVS that day if it would have worked. There are options for a doctor to prescribe you, including the need occasionally for strong pain medicine.

It sucks man. Sorry. But it usually goes away so it’s just a waiting game.