A couple of days ago, I went to a specialist for a set of steroid injections in the base of my neck. This came after more than a year of physical therapy to remedy my neck issues. While PT helped strengthen certain neck & back muscle groups, and really improved my posture and lifting, I still kept having problems.
I've had neck and back pain off and on since high school, seeing many chiropractors over the years. About 5 years ago, in a jiu jitsu class, I got kneed in the side of my head, which apparently torqued my neck in such a way that two disks at the base of neck herniated, bulged, and began to pinch nerves painfully. After chiro and PT of and on for a couple of years, the symptoms mostly disappeared. I resumed my active lifestyle of weight lifting, running, martial arts, etc.
This past February, my neck issues came back with a vengeance, this time by simply sleeping in a guest bed at my parent's lake house. I could barely lift my head level without severe pain for several days. Chiropractic only made it worse this time, so I started active physical therapy again. I was experiencing pain and tingling across both shoulders and down my left arm, at times even into my fingers. Over the past year, I underwent two 4-month sessions of PT, then was recommended for the steroid injections.
My first injections came last Thursday, and were strangely painful. I sat upright, only slouching slightly over a pillow, and the doc injected lidocane to numb the area. That hurt, getting a needle in the base of my neck! Once numb, he stuck a long needle deep into my spinal column. That didn't hurt actually, but I felt the pressure as he pressed it deeper into my spinal disks. As he began to squeeze the steroid medicine into my neck disks, I felt a weird pain, sort of hot and cold, in the center of my spine. I've never felt pain there before! Hard to describe. In fact, the more he injected, the sensations seemed to trickle down my back, and out my right shoulder. In about 5 minutes, it was over. I felt stiff for a few minutes, then as the day went on, I felt odd pains in my head, my elbow, my right knee, all of which the doc had said could happen due to the cortizone travelling not only into my neck, but around my body. Unusual pains, in unusual places.
I'll go back the first week of April for "round 2" of injections, which the doc thinks will be enough to relieve the swelling around the disk and nerves, and hopefully I can begin to get back to normal in about a month. Until then, I guess I'll just take it easy, try not to aggravate anything, so everything will begin to heal.
Its tough getting old...