Still trying to understand what happened during my LP
I want to start out by saying I’m glad I got the procedure because without it I wouldn’t have been approved to start treatments. Just wondering if anyone has had a similar experience with a tap or if I was an outlier.
I had a spinal tap three weeks ago and I’m finally feeling better enough to try to understand what happened during the procedure.
I was very very nervous, leading up to the procedure and communicated this with the staff and nurse practitioners. I also shared that I have a lower back injury (L4-L5) and low pain tolerance. I asked my doctor for anxiety meds, which I started the night before. I took 5mg of diazepam an hour before and another 5mg about 40 minutes before the procedure. I mostly read positive LP stories on Reddit and was also told by my doctor and the staff doing the procedure that I would feel a pinch from the numbing injection and nothing but pressure after. It was xray guided so I went in with that expectation.
They asked me to lay on my side. Gave me the numbing injection, which felt very sharp but it was brief. The nurse practitioner then said “you shouldn’t feel anything after this”. I immediately felt the LP needle and told them I felt something sharp. I could have asked for more numbing but it was so painful i couldn’t think straight. I thought they would give me another numbing injection, but nope they told me to breathe and kept pushing the needle in. It was an excruciating sharp pain and I cried and screamed for what felt like way too long until she said “we’re collecting the fluid now”. Then I felt pressure (like cramps) and that felt like a huge relief. When she took the needle out, the pain was sharp and intense again.
When the procedure ended, the nurse’s assistant had the nerve to ask if the procedure was better or worse than I thought it would be. She was in the room the whole time.
My recovery was brutal. No headache but my back pain was so severe, I didn’t sleep that night, was close to passing out from the pain. I considered going to the ER but I was so freaked out from the lp that I was worried about any other treatments. I waited 24 hours and then started taking Advil and muscle relaxers. After three weeks, I’m finally able to move more and have little pain at the injection site.