Wish you well Spinner. I have not had any help from injections. Had Lf-L5 tble for 30 yrs. Had it fused last year and metal put in. Now I have screwed up C6-C7. When I hurt my back so long ago...they did not have cat scans or mri's. So they made judgements icw sciatica. If you had sciatica leg pain obviously something was bothering it. If no sciatica...they told me to just go exercise. Exercise made it worse. I have now been told with rest and heat/cold I would have been ok. Now it has healed up in a bad way. Instead of exercising I should have had bedrest about a week and heat/cold treatments to let the swelling go down. They did not believe I had a disc problem because I had no sciatica. Find out years later I have a disc problem....it is called an obtuse bulge and is bulging directly into the spinal cord instead of out to the sides and affecting the sciatica nerves. I know what sciatica feels like though. When they gave me the shot to put the dye in for a myleogram...the doc missed twice and stuck the needle directly into my sciatica nerve! Wow what fire in my body from butt to toe.

Anywhooo.....the best relief I got.....and suggest you all try this if you have degenerative disc's....as it spreads the vertebrae's out a little and allows the disc to relax a bit...and also kind of forces the tight muscles to relax. It is to hang upside down on an anti gravity machine. They have been out of the picture for years but I am starting to see them advertised again. I got mine about 25 years ago. Won't part with it. Don't need it now...but at times....

25 years ago I would hang upside down from a bar mounted in my garage with a 45 pound dumbell in my hands. I had to do this every day. It was a mtc thing. If I missed a day just hanging again didn't stop the pain. I would hurt for about 3 days. So I really tried hard to hang every day. It was a life saver. Then I had to start reducing the weight on the barbell. Now just the weight of my torso is just about enough. My wife...who has passed...got me the anti gravity thing because whe was worried the garage thing wasn't safe. So I started using the anti-gravity thing. I didn't feel like it was enough weight...so I took 4 horseshoes...not real ones...the heavier bulky ones you play the game with. I ty-wrapped two together. One for each side. Then I velcroed a wrist weight around each one. I would turn upside down....then pick up the weights I made off the floor and get them up to my sides around the hips. This provided a bit more stretch.

Regret length of post. Just trying to help people out. And it takes a few words to explain what I have been through and how it helped.

Hope it will help some of you out there.

Seriously Sincerely,

Gemrod
BTW I popped my shoulder about 4 years ago. Got agonizing constant pain between the right shoulder blade and the backbone or spine. Comes to find out it is emanating...it is from C6-C7 disc being damaged. I have a neck stretching machine now I use every day and a tens unit. It has broken the pain chain.