Okay, when I go to the pain clinic, now since I was, since I’ve given up on the idea of the whole training thing, they’re very nice in there. The only disadvantage I would say is that you don’t see the same doctor every time you go. You just put your name in and they call you as the doctors become free, they take the top file no matter who that is and who they last saw.

So I literally haven’t seen the same doctor twice. Most of the time they’ll want to examine me, but I’m not quite sure why that’s necessary because you can’t see anything from the outside apart from the scar. And then they’ll talk about my pain, whether it’s improved. They’ll check that the medication that I’m on is what they have on record, so what they last gave me, kind of thing, or whether it’s been upped or changed by my doctor.

They’ll ask if theres been any change in the actual pain itself and any improvements, anything worse. And sometimes, when you get a good one, they’ll ask about anything else that I want to know. The last doctor I saw at the pain clinic was fantastic and we talked about everything from what drugs I’d need to change if I wanted to become pregnant to seeing a genetics consultant if I wanted to try pregnancy to more general things about my condition as well.

He talked about absolutely everything with me. I suppose some of them you just feel more comfortable with than others, which I suppose could be an advantage of swapping round all the time. But, you can be in there, they usually up my drugs in one way or another, change them or up them. So I’m on quite a cocktail now. But it’s just, you know, I can be in there for anything from ten minutes to forty minutes depending on the doctor that I see. It’s mostly talking and then go and get your prescription.

It is’ very easy. I suppose it’s similar to the epidural that a woman gets when she has a baby, if she wants. It is just a rather large needle stuck in the spine. It’s a production line thing. There is a lot of us lined up in the morning… you’ve got a choice of a sedative, which I declined because you can get out of hospital quicker if you don’t. And you are basically laid face down on the operation table theres a local anaesthetic, then the epidural goes in which, its uncomfortable but that’s all. It’s not out and out painful.

You’ve got a needle in your arm because sometimes it causes a very rapid loss of blood pressure, I don’t have side effects from many things. You lay in recovery for 30 minutes and then you can go home. But they are happy if you got someone who can pick you up and drive you. So I told them I had but I didn’t really, had two of those and I wouldn’t bother with it again because the improvement is minimal and you slip back anyway so’ I get on far better with the way I take the drugs and the way I manage what I do. That’s the best way to do it.

Carried on under them for quite a while and they set up a new clinic and I went in to have some injections in my back. They’re supposed to, what they try to do is inject fluid between all your joints to sort of open them. I’m afraid that didn’t work.

I didn’t get off this settee for three days afterwards and the injections, I had 36 needle holes in me. And they did ask me if I wanted to go back and have it done again, there was no way I would have that done again and I wouldn’t advise anyone to go with that. That is absolute diabolical.

I mean they said I would be awake all the way through it and after about a couple of minutes they put me out. I was in so much pain with it. But as I say, it didn’t work and that was when they referred me or meant to say that was when it must have been six months to nine months after they referred me to the pain clinic (Pain Management Programme).

Oh right. Yeah, I was, I went to the pain clinic and I was referred to have inter-facet joint injections and, you know, and I didn’t, that didn’t really impress me as far as having a needle in my spine, and I’d heard bad things about the facet joint injections.

I’d heard that you, the onset of pain after, you know, you just get it overnight, so the level of pain that I’m used to, it’s like turning up the volume from zero to ten and overnight. So that frightened me and I’d heard some other things about the, some other unwanted side-effects. So I left that.

I decided that isn’t the road I wanted to go on and I continued with medical treatment from the doctor and I continued with the exercises which I’ve since been neglecting and, you know, I went along my way of, you know my own way, stubborn kind of way. But, recently, I’ve decided to take up the inter-facet joint injections and, but that, like I said I waited ten years to make that decision and I had these, I had the inj, the injections in, I think it was in May and they were painful, extremely painful.

I was offered a pre-injection, you know, to relax me, but I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to have that. So I just had the injections as they were. And they were great. I mean I felt like I’d been hit by a horse, or kicked by a horse in the back, after I’d had the injections, I mean apart from during.

But, for a few minutes after the injections I was completely pain free and it was amazing, it was absolutely just stunning and it was a high, it wasn’t like you know having, you know, it was a drug but it wasn’t like, it didn’t have a euphoric effect, in that respect, didn’t make me dizzy and loopy and weird it, it just felt great.

And then, of course, because it was so invasive, it took about two weeks to get over it, the actual invasion but then I had, I was able to exercise more and to live without pain medication. And I had a break and it was really, I think I’m going to stick with the, the pain, with the inter-facet joint injections.

However, due to lack of medical staff I have to wait a year for my next injection. So, in the meantime, at least I know that I can, you know, continue with exercising and, you know, try to do as best I can.
How long did the pain stay away for after the injection?

The pain, after I had the injections, the pain stayed away for about, it’s hard to say, I do remember two weeks, about two weeks without pain and except I would overdo it, I’d be, I was so excited about not having pain, that I would, you know, do things that, you know, clean the flat or walk the dog, you know, a little bit further than I should have and then of course the pain would come creeping back.

So, I had to readjust my lifestyle, you know, after the injection and it was interesting, you know, just testing myself about how far I could go. But for two weeks, I would say, I was pain free… relatively pain free, for me pain free, you know. But the pain has come back but I’m kind of, now I’m just kind of confused as to how far I can push myself or not.

But I spoke to a woman, a nurse at the pain clinic and she said that I was on the right track. Some people, unfortunately, don’t exercise, don’t watch their diet and expect the injections to do everything for them without, without you know adding to it, you know being their own doctor as it were and that’s unfortunate.

But she said I w

It is’ very easy. I suppose it’s similar to the epidural that a woman gets when she has a baby, if she wants. It is just a rather large needle stuck in the spine. It’s a production line thing. There is a lot of us lined up in the morning… you’ve got a choice of a sedative, which I declined because you can get out of hospital quicker if you don’t. And you are basically laid face down on the operation table theres a local anaesthetic, then the epidural goes in which, its uncomfortable but that’s all. It’s not out and out painful.

You’ve got a needle in your arm because sometimes it causes a very rapid loss of blood pressure, I don’t have side effects from many things. You lay in recovery for 30 minutes and then you can go home. But they are happy if you got someone who can pick you up and drive you. So I told them I had but I didn’t really, had two of those and I wouldn’t bother with it again because the improvement is minimal and you slip back anyway so’ I get on far better with the way I take the drugs and the way I manage what I do. That’s the best way to do it.

Can you tell me a bit about what it is like to have an injection done?

Depends how the anaesthetist feels at the time. The first occasion I had some local anaesthetic before the injections, the second time I think the anaesthetist was feeling a bit vicious and said ‘You don’t need any local anaesthetic you’ll just have them. They are very, very painful for a short period of time. They helped probably for about six months the first time.

The second time only for about two months and they loose their effectiveness as time goes by. It was the same when the anaesthetist who gave me the last series of injections recommended that I went to the Chronic Pain Management Course.

Yeah, I know that, certainly for the lumbar epidurals that I have, it is a steroid, a long acting steroid they inject in. I’m, I know they do joint injections which I don’t know what they do for that, I know friends who’ve had them. It’s, the hospital, who look after my care and my pain management, I mean, the one great thing about the epidurals is you’re in and out literally.

The last time I was there I was probably in for three hours and then I was home again. Because it’s all done as a day case and because it’s not a theatre, it’s not an operation, you can eat and drink, so you don’t have to starve yourself in the morning, you know you can take your normal medication and everything as well.

So you go in, you’re admitted and the consultant obviously will come and do the consent form as you have to for these things, and basically they wheel you round to the treatment room and inject the steroid in and that’s it done.

I know that the first time I had it I was actually surprised at how much it hurt and it really does hurt, but they, they’re injecting fluid into your epidural space and it’s a fair bit of fluid they’re actually injecting in and, although I knew it was going to hurt, I wasn’t quite prepared for it. I think the thing is, I’ve had, what, five epidurals now, so I’m so used to it that I don’t really think very much of it now when I go in.

And it’s, I sit there and I remind myself that it’s worth it if I get some relief out of it. The one I had earlier this year that only lasted for a month, I remember afterwards thinking ‘do I really want to go through all that pain again if it’s only going to last a month but I did and it’s lasted longer. And I mean when you have them, what they say, what they say to you is it tends to work better on your leg pain than on your back pain.

It often doesn’t work for your back pain at all and in fact for the first time ever, when I last had it done, I ended up with a really, really bad back. And my back pain was unmanageable for a couple of weeks, then it settled down again, but my legs have been much better since.