Day 1: Prolotherapy: First Round of Prolo Finished!

 

    I received my third Prolotherapy treatment on August 25th, and, unbeknownst to me, I had COVID at the time.  Earlier that week I had embarked on an overly ambitious trip to Alaska to visit my daughter and on Wednesday I started feeling crummy.  I attributed it to overdo, but took a COVID test Wednesday night just in case.  It came back negative, as all the COVID tests I had ever taken have, and so I went to get my treatment Thursday morning.  It went about the same as all the others, though my doctor had a few extra medical students with him so there were more people in the room.  Over the weekend, I got worse instead of better. On Friday, my husband also came down with symptoms.  He too took a test that came back negative so we just figured it was a cold.  Saturday he ran a fever over 103 all day and on Sunday morning I suggested that we test again just in case.  This time they both came back positive.  So there I was dealing with the results of Prolotherapy on top of COVID - not recommended.  We had planned a relaxing week at the beach, but didn't feel up to driving down so we stayed at home in bed.  Maybe it was all the resting, but I don't think my post-treatment symptoms were as bad this round.

    Because this was my third round, the doctor wanted me to follow up with another spinal stability test before we continued, so I saw the PT for this again a few days ago.  The day before my appointment, I developed a muscle spasm in my low back - right in the area that we had been treating.  It was kind of like a charlie-horse, but in my back and it didn't go away - it kept getting worse.  Over the course of this week, I think I've decided that it was actually caused by irritation/trauma to a sprain I had already gotten in my T5-6.  In any case, it may or may not have affected the results of the stability test.  I explained the situation to the PT and then he had me do a series of standing/bending tests (which were excruciating due to the muscle spasm) and then lay on the table.  When he tested the stability of my pelvis, he determined that it was completely stable - a 0 on the movement scale as opposed to the 2 on the right and 1 on the left that I had received last time.  Based on the structural evidence, we decided that it was likely that the Prolo had worked.  This could have been affected by the tightness of my muscles, but it's unlikely that it completely skewed the results.  He retested my T 5-6 and T 11-12 joints and confirmed that they still had the same amount of instability he had previously seen and he thought that it was likely that the increased pain I had been experiencing was actually radiating from further up my spine.  He suggested that my doctor do a Facet Block at the T 11-12 joint and see if that affects my pain levels.  If it does, then he believes that a course of Prolotherapy on my thoracic spine would be helpful.  

    In discussing it further with my regular PT on Friday, she agreed with my theory that the stability that had been created in my pelvis had put added rotational stress on the joints further up my spine. She mentioned that I had the tightest para-spinal muscles and qls that she'd ever seen and those also put stress on the joints. She agreed with the other PT's recommendation about the Facet block. I have an appointment with my Physiotherapist's PA next Wednesday to discuss future treatment, so we'll see what she says.

Here's the thing:  I needed to try Prolotherapy so that I knew if it would work or not.  As with most things in my life, the results were not entirely conclusive.  Did the muscle spasm skew the test results? Maybe, but I kind of feel like if they did it was because God wanted me to continue the Prolo.  

I went into the appointment expecting to hear that no progress was made and we were back to the drawing board as far as treatment options. That wasn't the case and so I will continue to put one foot in front of the other and do the next thing that seems best.