I had an awesome visit today with Dr. Alex Egerter who is new to Gordon Medical (where I see Dr. Harris).

He did lots of amazing things and I’m super excited about his addition to GM and to my care team.

Dr. Harris had me see Dr. Alex to get what’s called Stellate Ganglion Block. The stellate ganglion is a set of nerves in the neck along both side of your voice box, providing most of the sympathetic nerve signals to your head, neck, arms and a portion of your upper chest. With a block, anesthetic (in this case procaine) is injected into the collection of nerves. This can help calm numerous conditions, including headaches, pain syndromes, autonomic nervous system dysfunction, and PTSD.

In addition to the injection in the neck (which is done under fluoroscopy so he can see what he’s doing), Dr. Alex also did 3 other procaine injections – one just under my rib cage and two along the pelvis. Long thin needles – didn’t love any of that or the way it made me feel for the first 30 minutes. But I am anticipating great results!

So the other series of injections he did was prolotherapy on the back of neck to help my cervical instability. If you remember, I went to Florida in 2022 to have this done because there were very few places in the country doing prolotherapy in the neck at the time and California absolutely did not allow it. But guess what?! I have options now!!!

(You can read about my Florida treatments here: https://philippijoy.com/doctors-programs/hauser-neck-center-caring-medical/)

I am planning to see Dr. Alex for prolotherapy on a regular basis, appts will be further apart as time goes on. But I’m so thrilled to finally have access to this really important treatment!