Nerve Block

[JudyW]

I started having pain in my left hamstring and thought I had pulled a muscle. Realized it wasn't a pulled muscle when it lasted a very long time. Then it escalated into numbness down my left leg into my foot. I had an MRI with contrast but because of my ADR at L4-5 the artifact tends to obscure the image. My surgeon still didn't believe there was any significant disc bulging at L5-S1 and didn't see any other obvious problems. He decided on an L5 nerve block,which I had on Thursday morning. My leg was pretty numb and my left leg couldn't hold any weight after the procedure, which he said was normal. That has gone and I'm still waiting for any relief.

My question comes from where the bandaid was on my back. It looked quite high, like around L2 or something. Is that the normal area for this type of injection? I was given twilight anesthesia so I don't remember anything. I trust my surgeon I just thought this was odd. Hoping for relief cause this sucks. The burning pain down my left leg is horrible. I never had this before with my L4-5 ADR.

[Harrison]

Hmmm, sorry about this continuance of pain Judy. What a drag on your energy. These few links may help you a little bit:

Mapping pain to dermatomes:
Correlating pain to spinal areas

Cheat sheet of the spine (PDF):
What's a good "cheat sheet" of the spine?

Master of the obvious question: did you already ask the doc the same question?

Please get a copy of the medical record, which is your legal right. Then let us know what you figure out.