Hello,
I just wanted to confirm what many others said about the pain, but how its worth it. I was on my second Doctor and after having multiple Xrays, Ct scans and Mri's come back all normal this was the last of the tests to do before the Dr. would have to tell me there isnt anything for us to find and go off of.
One of the issues that I had though, is that I have a very HIGH tolerance to any medications and I had warned the Anethesiologist about this, so they would know ahead of time that what might be a normal dose of sedative for someone else will be 10x that for me. He kinda giggled as if he had heard that before and I thought to myself, ok.... you'll see.
They put the IV in, started running the antibiotics, took me to the table, draped me and turned on the oxygen, attached me to the BP cuff, heart monitors and pulse ox and then they injected the sedative, waited a few mins, asked how I was and I said "perfectly fine", they asked if I felt loopy, I said "nope", so they gave me another dose, waited and asked the same questions and I answered the same back, "sorry doc, but nothing is happening", so they gave a third dose and still nothing!!! The Dr. said to the nurse... "this is it, we are at the max and cant go beyond 4 doses, so we'll do one more and see what happens". They gave me the 4th dose and I began to feel alittle loopy, but not like I should have, but there was nothing more they could do. I just had to grit my teeth and squeeze the tension balls they gave me and pray that it wouldnt hurt to bad.
They explain everything they are doing to you, every step of the way, at least mine did and the one thing I noticed is that my particular doc did NOT tell me which disc he was injecting into, only that they were injecting into "A" disc. I think that they do this, so you dont exaggerate your pain levels by knowing what disc they are injecting into. I guess in the past they found that some people go in there and will scream blue murder, faking it ect... in order to get pain medications or if you "think" you know what disc level your pain is coming from then in anticipation of knowing your going to be in pain you will exaggerate the true amount of pain, so my doc doesnt tell you which disc he is injecting into at all, only that they are injecting a disc. So once they got started he said "ok, we are injecting into a disc, tell me how you rate your pain" and all I felt was pressure and thats all I told him was it just felt like pressure, he then said ok, we are going into the next disc, tell me how you rate your pain and again all I felt was pressure. It was when they got the last disc that I hit the roof!!!! They call it recreating the pain that you are talking about, but it is the best way to find out where exactley the pain is coming from. Even though all of my scans & xrays came back normal, based on what the ortho surgeon and I had discussed, he thought that if there was a problem that it would end up being a 2 level problem and it ended up only being a one level problem, hence only requiring a one level fusion, although now almost two yrs after that fusion, it appears as though the level above the fusion is causing problems and they are sending me back for another Discography to confirm the pain at that level. Unfortunatley because I know what i'm in for and what the test is like, i've put it off for the past two months, but in all reality I need to just suck it up and get it done.
123 mentioned that you cant take your pain meRAB prior to the procedure and that doesnt help one bit, being in pain due to no pain meRAB and knowing your going in for something thats going to cause more pain.
You will do fine though, we have all survived it and all agree its a great test, its just a few mins of intense pain, which will hopefully help you get rid of what could be lifelong pain if you didnt have it done.
Good luck and let us know how it turns out for you.
Lisa
Did that reassure you any?? :dizzy:
Boy, am I making this sound painful. However, when I had my spike of pain, the doctor immediately added nurabing medication in the disc to relieve the pain and it felt so much better. 
It still hurt but nothing compared to those few seconRAB. One time he added nurabing meRAB and I was still hurting and he started yelling get me more nurabing meRAB QUICK. So ask if they can give you nurabing meRAB because you have a friend who had this done.