I also had diagnostic nerve blocks for lumbar stenosis. The injections were horribly painful. I was yelling in pain and the doctor never stopped stabbing me! I won't go near a spinal injection ever again. As for ablation, the same doctor tried to schedule one for me without ever discussing it with me. I refused. After what I went through with the nerve blocks I am certainly not about to let someone electrocute me with needles that heat up to 124 degrees centigrade to cause 2nd degree burns! That's how an ablation destroys perfectly healthy nerves. Look it up online. The procedure does nothing to help the diseased skeleton. Then the nerves often grow back. A significant percentage of people get short term or no relief from nerve blocks and ablations. The studies are out there on the Internet from reputable hospitals and professional medical journals. There are older studies that give better rates of success, but those are based on the doctors' responses. The newer study based on patient responses gives much lower success rates. The doctor who tried to pressure me into an ablation admitted in person to me that they can't even see the nerves they are trying to deaden or destroy! I came to the conclusion that spine doctors who do a lot of blocks and ablations are incompetent sadists in love with a quick procedure that makes them lots of money. What ethical person would risk paralyzing a person by using destructive techniques performed blindly that can't be relied on to work? The doctor I had lied to me and told me he had done hundreds of blocks and no one had ever had a problem with pain. He also called the procedure "minor" and promised that I would be "relaxed and comfortable"! Ha! He used a benzodiazepine sedative, which does NOT stop pain. It puts the patient into a temporary state of mental illness called dissociation. The patient still feels the pain, but the doctor is counting on the other effect of benzodiazepines: amnesia. In other words they make you helpless and confused so you can't say stop. It's a deceit, and they know they can do it and get away with it because it's your word against theirs afterwards, and since you had the drug they can just say you remembered wrong. The drug did nothing but paralyze me while I was wide awake. I could not defend myself or even speak. Never again!