@wilcy My mom had epidural injections in her lower spine that helped her neuropathy in her feet. She used to say it felt like she had hot pokers on her feet. I took her for about 3 of those spinal injections and they did help her pain, and she also had prescription meds in addition. That was a few years back. She hasn't needed them since then and she wears shoes for diabetics that are easier on her feet, and uses a wheelchair instead of standing on painful feet. I think patients are not supposed to do more than 3 of these injections per year.

I had a cervical epidural spine injection as a diagnostic test for my spine problem (prior to coming to Mayo) which was cervical stenosis with spinal cord compression. The doctor wanted to know if my pain would go away from this injection, and it did for 5 days, and then symptoms began returning. The steroid injected, eased some inflammation and the pain for a short time. I did have a paraesthesa caused by the injection that was horrible. It gave me a new pain that went into my index finger of my dominant hand as a stabbing burning electric pain that continued for weeks. If I moved at all, it stabbed me, and I just had to lay in bed and try not to move. If I touched my hand or finger, I got electric shocks and I could trace the entire path of the nerve by doing that. I had cold sensitivity in that hand for over a year and a half, so no thank you... I won't do that again. I already had spinal cord compression, and the injected fluid added pressure because it had no where to go.

I think issues can come up with anything that takes up space and puts pressure on nerves and nerve roots, so that should be a consideration in the decision to do this type of injection, and it is worth asking the doctor if there will be a potential problem because of something physical that may have already narrowed down the space where the injection will be. Some patients do benefit from this, but for me the only solution was surgery to fix the problem. This pain was bad enough after the epidural injection that I was shaking uncontrollably right afterward and nearly passed out, and it was the highest level of pain I ever felt in my life, way more pain than going through spine surgery, and it reset my pain scale numbers. It was only by doing deep breathing and visualization of something pleasant that I was able to keep from loosing consciousness because I had been practicing relaxation with deep breathing and music, and I replayed in my mind what I had been doing, and I also pressed on a relaxation pressure point in my wrist that my physical therapist told me about. As awful as this was, it has value for me because when I compare anything else to that, it isn't as bad, and I had proved to myself that I could tolerate pain and not let it control me. I think that really is the story; we can fear pain and it controls us as it had done to me for many years, or we can understand the pain, and do what we can emotionally and with our minds to control it and take away its power. I do know that fear increases pain a lot, and getting past the fear reduced pain for me.

I was able to tolerate my post spine surgery pain without pain medicine. I just relaxed and rested a lot. I had only temporary relief of pre-existing pain from the injection, and not enough to benefit. The stenosis was getting worse and I had surgery at Mayo that resolved all the spine related pain that I had everywhere in my body.

If you are getting injections in the spine, there are some serious risks that need to be considered, and a misplaced injection can cause damage. Ask the doctors to explain all the risks and statistics, and how successful their procedures are, and you'll need to decide if you want to proceed. Here are a few links about complications. I hope this answers your question, as I'm not sure where your injection would be, and I don't know if this is a true comparison.

https://rapm.bmj.com/content/21/2/149.abstract
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1399-6576.1994.tb03988.x

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