no better

The aforementioned injections were painful...pain second only to that of childbirth for me. I have had several severe lacerations, a few broken bones, sprains and the like but these injections were excruciating. The frustrating thing now is that the diagnostic injections I received did not give the results the doctor had hoped for so I do not qualify for the next step he wanted to take. Part of that does not bother me at all...the next step involved burning the nerve endings in my back so my brain would not get the pain message. This just sounds like something that should not be done. Instead, the doctor wants to go forward with an epidural steroid injection. This may give me 3 months of pain relief when I will need to have another. The cycle continues basically the rest of my life. I really do not consider this a solution. I do not have the time, every 3 months, to go in for injections and then rest 12-24 hours afterwards. I cannot drive for this procedure either, which also poses a problem. My husband is not able (or maybe willing) to take off for this. That means I need to rely on a friend since my daughter is now off living in her dorm at college and my son works daily at the apple orchard. I also homeschool Miss Bookworm and cannot afford to lose days to resting from an injection that may or may not help anyway. Frustration is building with this back issue. Pain is constant and getting worse and there is basically no cure for the joint damage. That in itself is hard enough but moving Miss Musicwriter to college has also got me down. I miss her SO much...I feel like I lost my best friend. She is loving it though and for that I am thankful.