Prolotherapy Treatment 1

Hello to you all,

Thanks a lot to everyone who has checked out this blog so far. I have had over 200 views which is amazing!

So its been almost 2 weeks now since my first Prolotherapy treatment and I'm feeling almost back to normal now! I hadn't been so incredibly nervous about an appointment in a long time! They were really nice to me though, I think they knew how nervous I was. The nurse who was looking after me was called Mandy, she was lovely and very calming. She took my blood presure and briefly talked me through what was going to happen. She had the gas and air on stand-by in case I needed it. I was lying on an extremely high bed under an xray machine. The doctor set up the xray machine over my left shoulder. He cleaned the skin and then injected the anaesthetic into the shoulder joint. He then waited a minute or two for tht to take effect before starting the Prolotherapy injections.

I've been trying to think how best to describe how it felt. I don't think I would say it was horribly painful, I was expecting short sharp pains as the needle touched the ligament. It was more unpleasant, like finger nails down a blackboard/purse your lips kind of unpleasant. At one point I was actually digging my nails into the palm of my hand and I did have a little faint at the end but I think that may have been more down to the fact I was breathing so quickly from nerves!

Bear in mind though that this for me is my most vulnerable area and has been for 10 years. Its extremely painful at the best of times, usually I hate people just touching it never mind sticking a needle in it. So for an area not so hypersensitive it might not feel too bad. I think the actual injection process only took a maybe 5 or 10 minutes, I'll have to check next time (I was trying to keep myself focused!) But it was quite relentless.


This is the area that was injected

I'm going to have the gas and air next time just to get me through it a bit easier and hopefully it'll help me focus on something else too. I'll just take a big inhale at the start before he puts the anaesthetic in. I know it was there on stand-by during my first treatment but I was just so focused on getting through it that I couldn't really manage to ask for gas and air at the time!

Another thing I thought about was that people with Hypermobility Syndrome apparently don't usually react as well to anaesthetics. However I only truely realised that mine had worked for me when I felt it wearing off a couple of hours later and I could feel my shoulder sort of throbbing realy deep down. It wasn't too bad though, I spent the rest of the day cuddled up at home using hot and cold packs on it and taking paracetamol. My shoulder was extremely stiff I could barely lift it for about 48 hours but the pain and stiffness did gradually decrease and by about the 3rd day it was almost back to my normal pain levels. I did also suffer from headaches, diarrhea and extremely bad nausea which I didn't realise were other side effects of Prolotherapy. I guess it's either due to the inflammation or the solution working its way through or a bit of both, again these went after about 2-3 days and really weren't that bad.

Although it was a tough couple of days it wasn't dreadful and for me, I think it'll be absolutely worth every minute if it does help - some pain for some gain for a change! It wasn't as bad as my normal pain can get and it's nowhere near as painful as trapping a nerve.

I should probably have said in my previous post that Prolotherapy takes 12 weeks from the last injection to fully complete it's growth process. This could last up to 5-10 years, which is pretty amazing. I'm not sure if this applies the same for us with Hypermobility syndrome but hopefully I'll be able to test that out! - I'll edit all that in to the previous post in a bit.
 
My next treatment is booked in for next Tuesday the 5th of Feb. I don't think I'll be as nervous next time any because I'll know what to expect now.


~Katie