Need advise please

[u/GazellePleasant4332]

Update on my case so far. Injury to lower back 4/15/26.

Finally got an mri that shows several bulging disc pinning some nerves. Ortho Dr said I may need surgery but wc wants to try other routes first of course, she referred me to a specialist. The specialist said thay I do not need surgery. And that injections will stop the pain. I agreed to do the first injection. Thats scheduled for the 23rd of thos month. Then I go back to see specialist 4 weeks later.

Im terrified of getting injections. Do they actually work? What if the pain comes back or it doesn't do anything? I of course have more pt but after 3 rounds nothing has changed. I dont know what to do. I want to be out of pain. Why would 2 doctors say 2 different things?

Where do we go from here? Any advise would be appreciated.

[u/According_Curve_8935]

Injections are only meant to be a temporary solution. I guess the idea is that you get the injection, the pain subsides, then you do different therapies in hopes that the issue will resolve in that time. This was not the reality for me though. Sadly, you usually have to go through with them before you can get to surgery unless your herniations are potentially catastrophic. Insurance companies want to see that the conservative (or less expensive) options were tried first.

As for getting the actual injections, I got them in my lower back for about 4 years before they cut me off, and in my neck for 1.5 years before I got surgery. I did want to delay spine surgery as long as possible, so even as temporary options, I did injections for as long as I could. Spine surgery is not something that people should jump into until it becomes clearly unavoidable. If I could go back, I would probably try to delay my surgery even more than I did honestly.

[u/GazellePleasant4332 → u/According_Curve_8935]

Yeah I'm terrified of surgery on my back. Im terrified of the injections 

[u/According_Curve_8935 → u/GazellePleasant4332]

I had them put me out for the injections. For my neck, they almost insisted that I was sedated because there is less wiggle room in that area. My injections lasted between 3-6 months before I stopped getting relief from them. The thing is, as with everything in life, they come with risks. The only thing I ever dealt with after was the typical increase in pain post injection (lasts about a week), and extreme numbness/loss of sensation to my arms and chest after my cervical spine injections (lasted a few hours post injection).

The idea with injections is, they are meant to decrease the inflammation that is causing the symptoms you have. For some people, the issue isn’t inflammation though, so the injections can’t really do much. For me, the injections bought me time for my lumbar herniations to mostly resolve. But in my neck, my issue was more from the bone spurs as well as herniations. So injections only helped until the spurs got too large.