Chris, thank you for posting and taking the time to post your signature. You've obviously been living with this for some time...more than a decade! Gosh. And you are on a lot of pain medications. You've adapted to a lot of stress indeed (duh!?). How?
That's a great deal of pain to endure. And how did your chiro get the pain to go away for a month? That sounds amazing; but it must be frustrating for you at the same time. That must have been validation for you that the disease was localized in your cervical spine, but could somehow be manipulated.
I pondered this issue in 2005 and 2006, but in my case, it was infection from mycoplasma pneumonia in my throat that migrated to my cervical spine. Perhaps there is a propensity for gram-negative infections to settle in to the small joints (z joints or commonly known as facets) before they get into the spinal discs and surrounding areas. For that reason, manipulation by adjustment may work, albeit temporarily.
Some of this is speculation on my part, but my research is well founded in terms of spinal diseases, which are ignored because of the way medicine is set up in this country.
See this topic for more insights on the pathology of degenrative disc disease, a topic not dealt with openly by American medicine:
http://www.adrsupport.org/forums/f44...l-causes-9218/
For what it's worth, cervical patients do well with with ADR or fusion; assuming the absence of other disease processes. Lastly, what NSAIDs or anti-inflammatories have you tried? There are many -- did your pain management doc cycle you through all the different classes of script and natural remedies? If not, find another one!