Pain relief

I’ve found it very interesting to undergo a series of hyaluronate injections in an attempt to keep my tibias and femurs from grinding each other to shreds at the knees. This is an alternative treatment to cortisone, with supposedly longer relief and fewer negative side effects.

Both of which I support.

This is a new therapy, and so far it comes pre-packed in individual syringes, rather than in bottles, like other things that go in syringes. I suspect it’s a big-pharma thing, both to keep the physician out of the dosing cycle and to mark up the pricing margin. You know, like bubble-packing tablets.

With cortisone, the physician will typically draw some lidocaine into the hypo, and then add in the steroid, so it all goes into you in one merry swoop. For hyaluronate, you get a dose of lido and then the pre-dosed goods.

Well, I’m here to tell you that in all my years of getting injections of one sort or another, I have never had anything hurt like these shots, not even when I got a double dose of cholera vaccine.

So I finally mentioned this to the orthopod, and asked if there was something special about the needle for this stuff. He blinked a couple of times and replied, “Well, could be. Hyaluronate is a gel, so you need a big needle to push it through.” Then he said he’d double down on the lidocaine dose and see if that helped.

Usually he tries to keep the syringe out of sight when giving the injection, but since I obviously had skin in the game, this time he didn’t bother. Let me just say that that needle was the biggest mo-fo I have ever seen. I mean, you could push spaghetti through that sucker. Maybe even linguine. No wonder it hurts like bloody hell, and always leaves a bruise afterward.

But this time, with the double dose of lido, they went down a treat. Man—I did not feel anything. He could have drilled for oil, and I would have been fine.

So—if you have hyaluronate in your future, save yourself some tsuris. Just tell the medico you need extra lidocaine. You’re welcome.