Bonnie Chapman, the 20-year-old daughter of Duane “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman, was hospitalized recently. She is the third member of the reality TV family to have to get emergency medical care since family matriarch Beth Chapman died of cancer. Fortunately, as Yahoo Entertainment reports, the problem isn’t life-threatening.
On Wednesday, Bonnie, who works as a makeup artist, posted a picture on Instagram that got her fans worried: a photo of her wrist bearing a hospital bracelet with the caption, “finally home.” Considering that her father had recently been hospitalized for chest pains, and her half-brother had been hospitalized before that after getting injured in a scuffle with a perp, fans were rightly concerned that it was something serious.
As it turns out, as Bonnie explains, she wasn’t hospitalized for something life-threatening. Serious, yes, in that it can cause memorable pain, but not life-threatening.
“[I was] hospitalized due to back pain, which turned out to be a pretty bad case of sciatica. I wasn’t able to sleep or walk.”
According to WebMD , sciatica is an inflammation of the sciatic nerve. The nerve originates in the lower back and extends down into the legs. When it’s inflamed, it can be extremely painful.
“For some people, the pain from sciatica can be severe and debilitating. For others, the sciatica pain might be infrequent and irritating, but has the potential to get worse.”
Unfortunately for Bonnie and other sciatica sufferers, there’s not much that can be done about it. If the condition is caused by an underlying medical issue, such as lumbar spinal stenosis or degenerative disc disease, your doctor can treat that and, with any luck, address sciatica in the process. Otherwise, the best remedy seems to be heat packs, cold packs, and/or over-the-counter pain medicines.
Bonnie’s hospitalization was the third medical incident to bedevil the family since Beth died earlier this summer. Not long after Beth’s passing, son Leland Chapman was taking down a fugitive, while the Dog’s Most Wanted cameras were rolling, and wound up with a severe knee injury that laid him up for several weeks. And then, in an even more serious health scare, Duane Chapman was hospitalized with chest pains. He was later diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism, a diagnosis that has spurred him to make healthy lifestyle changes and to try to quit smoking.
Bonnie, for her part, has done her part to help her family navigate life without Beth. Back in August, rumors broke that Duane was already back in the dating pool after he was spotted having dinner with a woman. Bonnie explained that the woman was a member of the show’s production team and told her fans she was “p*ssed” that such rumors were going around so soon after her mother died.
