Prolotherapy: Treatment #1

 

    Sorry if the picture is triggering, but much of this post is about injections so... Last Monday we headed into The City for my afternoon Prolotherapy appointment.  I'm going to be very clear in this post so if you're sensitive to this type of thing you may want to stop reading now. For others, like me, who are interested in exactly what a Prolotherapy treatment is like, read on.  

    They went over last minute questions confirming that I had taken no anti-inflammatories for the last two weeks, had a ride home, etc. Then they had me lay face down on a paper-covered examining table with a face cutout. I lowered my pants to an uncomfortable level, but in order to get at your SI joint a fair amount of buttocks must be exposed 😕.  They sterilized the area and then donned lead aprons, giving one to my husband as well who elected to be in the room.  The doctor arrived at that point and carried on a ten-minute conversation with me during the treatment while I was face down.  I didn't see the guy at all! He positioned what I think was an x-ray machine (I'll ask more questions about it at my next treatment) and began a series of taking x-ray pictures, inserting a syringe, maneuvering the syringe into place, and injecting the dextrose/lidocaine solution. He did this about four times as I was only having my right SI joint treated first.  This was to minimize the trouble if I had a bad reaction and because my right SI was laxer than the left so it could use an extra treatment. In my next treatment we are planning to do both sides.  It was painful, but not much worse than the numbing injections at the dentist.

    I was a little sore leaving the office and we had more than an hour's drive home so that wasn't super fun, but it was not as bad as I had expected.  The weeks prior to my treatment I had been struggling with pain/inflammation in my jaw after some dental work but in the days before the Prolo, it had been diminishing.  I had half expected the inflammation to shift from my jaw to my back after the treatment, but instead the pain increased by multiple factors in my jaw and my mid-back, another area of regular pain, but my low back had only mild symptoms.  This increased over a few days and then was intense for a few days, and now has begun to recede again.  The low back has been mildly sore (like a headache) consistently since the treatment. I've had a migraine every day since the treatment, but that is not terribly surprising as they are often triggered by inflammation, and I tend to get 3-5 migraines a week anyways.  The challenge is that there is little I can do for the pain.  They said I could use ice on other parts of my body, so I've often had ice on my face for my jaw pain, and I can use Tylenol, which does very little for me.  The doctor also cleared me for cannabis use so I take CBD regularly, use a THC rich topical cream (which is not absorbed into the blood so doesn't get you high), and today I tried 5mg of indica edibles.  They are totally legal where I live, and my doctors and family have been encouraging me to try it out and see if it helped.  It didn't.  It made me tired and groggy and didn't relieve the pain, it just reduced my capabilities of dealing with it because I didn't feel up to moving around.  So at least I can say I tried, but I don't think that'll be a help to me.

Here's the thing:  The doctor warned that people reactions vary from nothing at all to being totally bed-ridden for three weeks.  I'd say I fall somewhere in the middle of that.  It hurts, my overall pain levels have increased, but it's not unbearable.  I am planning to go back for my next treatment in two weeks.