Epidural: one week report

Well, technically tomorrow it’ll be a week, but I probably won’t have time to update my blog, so this’ll have to be close enough.

My pain level has gone from about a 8 or 9/10 in the 24 hours following the injections to about a 4.5 or 5/10.  I’m actually really horrible at the pain scale, which is unfortunate since I’m supposed to be tracking it daily…I have a high pain tolerance and tend to report everything as “well, it’s not THAT bad” even when I’m curled up crying.

Using the Hyperbole and a Half pain scale, I’m definitely at a 4.5.  So there you go.

My big victory of the day was talking a walk around the outside of our building at work.  Don’t be too jealous!

Sitting is a bit of a problem; I get really stiff, really quickly.

Otherwise, my pain is mostly sciatica.  I had a bit of it prior to the epidural, but the way the shots work is to inject medication into a very smooshed area, so it actually compresses the spinal cord a little bit until the medication is absorbed, and that’s caused some pretty significant sciatica. It’s fun to be sitting there minding my own business and suddenly feel like someone shoved an icepack into the back of my thigh.  It’s very exciting.

On the other hand, aside from the incredible stiffness and sciatica, I haven’t had a lot of spine pain.  That’s encouraging.  I’ve thought many times over the past few days, “if riding just makes me feel like this afterwards, I can definitely deal with that”.  Obviously I haven’t tried riding yet (or, really, anything more strenuous than walking a very short distance) but I’m staying optimistic that the injections will get rid of the deep spine pain I was getting after riding.  Fingers crossed!

I call my doc for a check in tomorrow and then see him next week Thursday (2/10). I’ll post an update again then. 🙂