I think my lumbar facet injections (all 3 of them) went really well on Wednesday. The doctor injected lidocaine and cortisone into the three lowest lumbar facet joints on the right side of my spine. When the needles went in and he first injected the contrast dye (so he could see what he was doing under x-ray), it were extremely painful, but in kind of a good way because they felt like they were in the right spot. A few minutes after he injected the lidocaine, he had me arch my back slightly (I was lying on my stomach), and he asked me how much I thought the pain decreased (that’s something I would have probably fainted while doing right before the procedure), and I said between 50-75%, so I think these shots are going to be very successful. The lidocaine wore off after about 6-8 hours, so now I’m in a lot of pain again, but hopefully the cortisone will kick in soon. The piece of paper they gave me to take home said it would take 2-5 days for the cortisone to start taking effect and up to 2 weeks for the full effect. My follow-up appointment is on September 2nd, at which point I’m really hoping I’m well enough that I can go back to work. Except that I’ve been having lots of neck pain (also a facet joint problem), increasing over the past month and I’m hoping that I can have the nerve endings burned off again soon. The doctor who just performed these injections doesn’t do cervical neurotomies, but the other doctor at the pain clinic has agreed to do it because my doctor is out and I just heard yesterday that my insurance has authorized him to do it and he can do it on Monday, but I told them I just had these injections done on Wednesday so I’m waiting to hear back if that’s too soon to have another procedure done or if it’s ok, because a neurotomy doesn’t have any steroids or anything and if I can get it done soon then maybe I can recover from that before the 2nd also, which would be good because my neck pain triggers daily migraines unless I take elevated doses of my migraine preventative and the elevated doses of my migraine preventative decrease my cognitive function (I’ve been saying the wrong words for things and I knit something for about 8 hours making a really stupid mistake the entire time and I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what and I didn’t stop and figure it out until I was done, and it took me way too long to figure it out, and I should have stopped after about 20 minutes of knitting, not 8 hours!), so I’d really like to decrease that medication before going back to work, but I can’t have daily migraines and go to work, so… you see my dilemma.