I have neuralgia – trigeminal, occipital and glossopharyngeal neuralgia. If, like me, you have neuralgia, then you’re presented with various steps in your line of treatments. You begin by first ruling out tumours, CSF leaks, or any other structural issues (to name a few). Your treatment may consist of medication and physiotherapy. Then a point comes where various forms of injections are suggested. In my experience, it’s the last resort before being offered surgery as an option.
I currently know of two types of injection options because these were suggested to me.
Taking it further from my previous blog post “Living With Neuralgia: Trigeminal, Occipital & Glossopharyngeal Neuralgia” – where I briefly shared about getting injections as treatment, I promised to go into details of it. So, here it is:
But before we continue, please remember that I am not a medical professional, I am a patient – a curious patient looking for answers and various coping mechanisms which I share with you here, well at least everything I have experienced so far. If you experience anything I speak of then please speak to your doctor, like I did and get customised help – something we all deserve to get.
1. Trigger Point Injections (TPI)
Firstly, let’s address what trigger point injections are:
These are injections to relieve, relax and loosen tight muscles. They’re also given to treat pain and tenderness.
In my case, it was believed that the tightness could be adding to nerve irritation leading to avoidable additional pain.
Sometimes, these injections are just anaesthesia and sometimes, steroids are involved too.
In September 2022, I went through two rounds of these trigger point injections on two different days (approximately two weeks apart). On the first day, I was given five pairs of injections – so yep, that means 10 injections.
I was given these injections at various areas near the shoulder, upper back and the base of the neck. Before this was done, these areas were disinfected – a process that took 15-20 minutes to do.
The first injection was the anaesthetic, to numb the area, the second injection was the steroid in that same area – this continued on in four different places.
Now how did the doctor decide where to inject? It wasn’t just by feeling tightness with the hand, but by being guided by an ultrasound / sonography machine – this is how the tight band of muscles and exact locations became visible. On the monitor, we could clearly see where the needle was going in (and trust me, it went in very deep!), and then the steroid was injected – you could see the liquid medicine release into the muscle.
Visually it looked beautiful, but it hurt like hell.
The perils of having Ehlers-Danlos syndrome means that local anaesthesia doesn’t work too well, so I felt loads of pain but if I tightened up from the pain and fear, it would’ve felt worse, which is why breathing, relaxing and working with the situation and the body’s need was essential.
A tape dressing was applied on all the injection sites to help apply compression and reduce the possibility of inflammation.
During the second time I went through these injections, six areas were targeted, which meant that I went through 12 injections this time. These were given at the base of the neck, the neck (side & back of it), jaw and face.
Like I mentioned earlier, the idea of going through this painful process was to understand how much of the pain is being additionally triggered by the tight muscle and how much of the pain is coming from the nerve being damaged or irritated.
Relevant Read:
Did the Trigger Point Injection Work for My Neuralgia?
Despite going through two rounds of these injections on just one side (my left side), the trigger point injections didn’t eliminate or even reduce my neuralgic pains as we had hoped. The reduction in muscle tightness was temporary despite carrying on with physiotherapy and daily exercises.
Unfortunately, these injections threw off my period cycle – they ended up starting early and lasted 25 days adding to my weakness.
So did this all help? Nope, unfortunately it didn’t reduce my neuralgic pains but in fact, it caused tenderness, pain and it threw off my period cycle.
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2. Occipital Nerve Block Injections
I have not yet experienced Occipital Nerve Block Injections especially since after my trigger point injection (TPI) experience – recovering from the actual tenderness, the adverse reaction to a transdermal pain patch and with my periods cycle being thrown off – I wanted a break from seeing doctors.
As I type this, it’s January 2023 and my doctor detox is not coming to an end, I need to go back and see my neurologist, get my medicines tweaked a bit and see what are my options ahead (hopefully avoiding injections and the lingering surgery) but back to occipital nerve block injections…
If I do ever have these injections, here’s what I should expect…
Like TPI, for occipital nerve block injections, an anaesthetic will be applied to the back of the head (above the neck) and then a steroid injection will be injected to where the occipital nerve is.
Some people experience relief from the pain within 15 minutes, but for some it can take a few days.
If I do ever go through these injections, I will share a first-hand account of it.
In fact, I promise to update this space with whatever happens next on my journey with neuralgia.
So far, if you wish to know how I’ve even got to this point, here’s a link to each blog post on this journey:
The first was the unknown pain:
The second was the CSF Leak, Brain Sagging & Surgery:
The third was being diagnosed with three types of neuralgia, how it effects me and the treatments I go through for it:
The fourth is THIS blog post on injections for neuralgia.
If you have an experience with neuralgia, then please do share your experiences in the comments section below. We all know how important lived experience is, so please see this as a safe space to do so.
Thank you for taking the time to read.
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