Well, the neurosurgeon has said that there is nothing except surgery that is going to relieve the symptoms that I have. I guess the epidural in his mind was a one shot deal as it did not relieve any of the symptoms. If a person were to consider fusion surgery - his thoughts seem to be pretty good. We talked about the motion of the discs at that level and what the C5-C6 and C6-C7 contribute to the overall motion of the neck (which was minimal in his opinion). His biggest concern was restoring the spacings so that the nerves have a less restrictive path from my spinal cord. I guess my spaces are pretty small at these levels. The one positive thing I noted yesterday was that on my most recent MRI, ALL the other levels for my discs looked really really good. I also had been doing some excercises that my chiropractor had shown me and I have partially restored my lordotic curvature (weird).
I had a good conversation with Sue Hart of the Stenum Hospital yesterday. I was convinced earlier by my doctor that I would never be a candidate for ADR as I had severe arthitis in my neck with bone spurs. Sue did convince me to send off my MRI's, X-rays to the Stenum hospital. She mentioned that this is typically not an exclusion criteria for this procedure and Stenum would provide an evaluation within 2 weeks.
Are there any of you out there that has gone through the procedure at Stenum that would be willing to call me to talk about their experience? Right now I am in the decision phase and am gathering information about both sides of the fence so I can be informed. Please send a PM if possible.
As I fretted over some of the decisions yesterday I began to do further research on the Stenum Hospital and typed in "Stenum Hospital reviews" in Google. About halfway down the page I noted a video testimony from Stenum in regards to ADR. As I clicked on the 6-8 minute video some of my fears were alleviated. There in the video was Dr. Karlsten Ritter-Land describing the procedure / benefits and the lady that I talked to earlier - Sue Hart. It seems so much more real now that I can put a face to a name. Also it was rather timely as I was really frustrated. God has a keen sense of when I need to be put at ease.
Anyway - there is a second opinion coming for me on June 9th with another Cedar Rapids doctor and the evaluation from Stenum. Now the waiting game begins.
thanks for the all the prayers and kind support.
Mark