Army wife... welcome to the forum and I'm sorry that you are having such problems.
I'm curious about why they would be doing discography on a grade 5 disc? Normally discography will be used confirm the source of pain generators or to rule the 'less bad' discs in or out. Typically, the grade 5 discs will be included in any surgical plan, so why test them?
I also wonder about the order of testing. In many cases, having a 10/10 response will so severely frazzle the patient that he/she will be unable to give reliable pain responses after that disc is tested. Many of the doctor's I've watched doing discography will test the expected 'good' discs first because they know they may not get a usable response after the 'bad' ones.
Regarding uttering the F word... When I was in Munich for my ADR surgery, Dr. Zeegers was highly motivated to rule the 2nd disc out, so I'd get a single level procedure instead of a 2-level. He kept on going back and forth trying to determine if the less bad response could be interpreted as negative. I was screaming so much that Dr. Zeegers stopped and said, “Mr. Mintzer, there are other patients waiting outside. They can hear you and you are scaring them. “
My reply, only half joking was, “Oh, fuck them.” That was my 3rd discography, but my first one with zero sedation. And my pain was certainly discogenic pain as evidenced by my amazing recovery following my ADR surgery. However painful it was, the discography was critical in deciding how we would proceed.
I’ve held people’s hand through discography more than 50 times now. I hope that your experience was like most that I’ve seen. However bad the momentary pain upon pressurization is, it fades relatively quickly. In a few cases (and in one of my discograms), the procedure flared-up the pain syndrome. Not the horrible stab up on pressurization, but just a general flare, somewhat worse for a week or more. In most cases, it’s over by the time you put your clothes back on.
Good luck… please keep us posted as you make progress. All the best,
Mark
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