Mine looked like this, except that my technician was a hunky young man.
Yesterday I had an epidural infusion of steroids into the L 5 region of my spine to help diminish some of the pain that I've been having due to spinal stenosis in the area. It went well, and was actually pretty entertaining. There was some discomfort, yes, but nothing that I had not expected, and the procedure itself went smoothly. Was all good. I was told that it may take as long as a week or two before I can expect to see improvement as a result of the epidural.
There was an hour delay before my doctor could begin the procedure because the C Arm X-ray machine tech assigned to me was elsewhere helping another patient, and things weren't going well. I had no issues with hanging out comfortably in the waiting room until it was my turn. I hope everything came out OK for that patient. But while I was waiting, since the epidural was given in an outpatient pain clinic, and since the waiting room cubicle "walls" were actually curtains, I couldn't help but hear other conversations going on around me.
The clinic was busy and every cubicle was full, some for epidurals, others for different procedures, but all of us had a similar story: we hurt. And we wanted some relief. I wasn't consciously eavesdropping, honest, I wasn't. But it would have been difficult not to hear the litany of concerns that these people brought to their appointments.
After I arrived home and had the prescribed ice pack on my injection site, I thought about the events that day in the pain clinic, and I decided to learn a bit more about chronic pain and it's treatment. My google search turned up this interesting video documentary produced by the Discovery Channel entitled Pain Matters. You can watch this very good hour long video here.
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