    Back to Patient Home  Cortisone Injection  First of all,
will it hurt?  This is usually the first question everyone asks,
particularly if you have had a cortisone shot previously.
Believe it or not, NO. You don't believe me, do you? Well, let
me put it this way: I can give a shot to a child under age 10
and 99% of the time the child does not cry. How is that for
proof? You know that a child will cry if it really hurts, and
the only reason they don't cry is that it didn't. I have been
doing this for years, and the most common reaction from a
patient who has just had a shot is, "How did you do that? That
didn't even hurt!"  How do I do it painlessly?  I put fast
acting numbing medicine in the shot. What is it? Lidocaine (a
numbing medicine) that I have specially buffered (made the pH
the same as the body's) to take all of the sting out of it and
to speed up how fast it works. The Lidocaine usually is
effective in one to two seconds. Amazing, right? This way, you
do not feel the long acting numbing medicine