Pain Management

When you have Duchenne muscular dystrophy, chronic pain simply comes with the territory. Degeneration of muscle can lead to a gradual increase in pain throughout the body. Sure, you could try prescription narcotics to help alleviate most or all of the pain. But the side effects are numerous, and overuse of these drugs can lead to dependency or loss of effectiveness of the drug on your system. I have chronic back and hip pain, so I opted against the reliance on pain killers and went to a Pain Management specialist four years ago. At that time, I was diagnosed with myofascial pain syndrome (chronic pain involving tissue that surrounds muscle). He treated me with something called a trigger point injection used to treat extremely painful areas of muscle. A trigger point is a knot, a severe tightness of muscle. To help loosen up this knot, the doctor injected my back with a local anesthetic followed by an anti-inflammatory medication into the specific areas of pain. This procedure relieved my back pain almost immediately and I have not had that pain in four years…that is, until recently. Today I made a repeat visit to the very same Pain Management clinic for the very same treatment to the very same area of my lower back. One hour and four injections later, I was left with high hopes for the very same success. I should notice a significant decrease in my pain level over the next two weeks. Wish me luck!