Although I’m continuing to have to take pain medication in addition to having the lidocaine and steroid shot to the back of my head that I did (whose name I will eventually, for the life of me, remember… I know it’s the one that begins with dex), I’m not quite as miserable as I was leading up to yesterday… or after I got the actual shot when it didn’t almost immediately take away the majority of the pain like it usually does right then. I think I’m going to stick with the lidocaine and steroid shots for as long as they are useful, conceding the fact that they have begun to grow… less useful over time, although the RFA (radiofrequency ablation, “the probes”) seems like it’s more of a miss than a hit to me, and especially not a direct hit unless you hilariously count one of my nerves being nicked by the needle in the process of numbing. That really hurt!

Fioricet is also beginning to work less than it was, or less than it had been, so I know that I’m starting to round the corner on that medication. And that’s a damn shame, because for awhile it worked phenomenally when needed. Now it just… doesn’t. So that’s one less useful medication for me. And I’m not even going to begin to think about the possibility of using opioids right now because we’re still in the War Against Pain Patients, even when the patient’s history of having tried everything under the sun is conveyed over the course of years of her medical records. I mean, what other options are there out there? Other than one of the most obvious ones if not the most obvious one, which is “this pain is never going to become well-managed”.

Sigh.