After I was dx, a year and a half after I developed rsd, my treatment began with LSB, I had 23 of them. the first was of course diagnostic. This one was the best one. The relief I felt was great, immediate warmth to my freezing leg and I was within 15 mins after the procedure able to go up and down stairs- something i had not been able to do for some time. After that I had the following 22 trying to recapture that success. And we did in varying degrees. But it never lasted over lets say 24 hours. Atsome point during this time, the rsd spread to my left leg.

After many mri of every part of my spine except my thoracic, and finding nothing, I finally asked for one of my thoracic due to severe flares, lesions and spasms in that area and my ribs.
Dr. S had said for some time that a conditon in my spine was continually"setting off" my horrible flares daily. How he always knew there were problems there without an mri is just to his credit. As when the mri came back there were many many problems.

So all of that was to share this - since the tradional rsd blocks had failed years before and since I was full body my pain management doctor decided to do a series of epidurals -15 to be exact- in the thoracic area. The relief was unbeliveable. It took several as every T disc i have is herniated but it did stop that area of my body from the horrible spine burning, bone burning and lesions on my back and ribs.

Although they only last three months I am anxiously awaiting the next round. You have to have a long break in-between .

Sadly the rsd just moved its intensity to other areas of my body. However, the spine pain is so dibilatating that this has made a significant difference.

I also should mention that after each epidural I did have a horrible 3-4 day full body flare from the I V and the catheter . But it has still been worth it.

Again these were not rsd nerve blocks - these were epidurals anyone with disc problems would get. I think our disease is so dibilatating that sometimes we forget to treat our "normal" problems and in doing so it can help abate our opportunistic rsd. cz