medial branch block diagnostic

Yesterday afternoon Craig and I headed over to Biltmore Surgical Center for my medial branch nerve blocks at C2/C3. We were there for a few hours but the actual procedure only took about 15 minutes. The injections really didn't hurt at all (less than the dry needling I had done that morning with Dr. Beran at PT). Dr. Schurgin explained to me beforehand that I'd be keeping a 3 hour pain log after we finished, recording my "percent improved" at each 30 minute increment. They didn't sedate me as much as the first time I had this done in the spring since the drowsiness can interfere with pain perception but I was feeling pretty groggy the rest of the evening...even stumbled a little when we walked in the house to keep things interesting. hah!

A few funny things that always happen when getting vitals and/or IV (which has been unusually common the last few months):
- Explaining the massive scar going up my forearm makes riding my bike into a tree that much more plausible.
- I have to assure every nurse that despite my resting pulse of 48 bpm, I'm very much alive.

The great news is that my pain definitely went down in those 3 hours. I recorded my percentage of improvement at a range of 30-50%, which tells us that (at least some of) the pain is coming from the facets. We won't know for sure if those numbers justify doing the pulsed radiofrequency until we meeting with Dr. Schurgin on Tuesday. I woke up this morning feeling pretty shitty, but I knew that was coming. Any relief the nerve blocks did provide would wear off after 3 hours and he warned me that bruising from the injection would likely increase my baseline pain. I did go to yoga this morning and was planning on playing tennis after with Tanis (we've been taking a "drill class" at La Camarilla) but had to skip out on that.

Now just looking forward to Monday so we figure out the next step!