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Old 02-10-2011, 08:09 PM
annapurna annapurna is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2004
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First, there's really no way to find a sure thing doctor or surgeon. Everyone's going to be guessing. Your best bet is to find one that lays out a reasonable course of action that starts with minimally invasive stuff to understand what's happening with your body. If the doc refuses to discuss things with you or answer your questions, don't go back. I've often suggested pre-planning two visits, the first visit to get a diagnosis and a course of action and the second after you've done your research to ask all the questions you wished you asked in the first.

That said, the whole body shakes sounds like it could be pointing to something serious enough that a doc might chose to move through minimally invasive to more more invasive pretty quickly. I'm not saying that because I recognize the symptoms; it's just a guess that whole body symptoms suggest more serious problems.

You should be able to ask for a copy of the x-ray and ask for a second or third opinion, even the freebie ones you'd get here. Too much distraction, too much space created by the ADR, could cause pain at that level but Laura, the better informed of the two of us, heard your comment about whole body shakes and immediately thought myleopathy, not distraction pain. It might be that the ADR was slightly misplaced and led to too much space and too much spinal cord irritation. You might even be forced to go the route of CT with contrast to really see what's happening at that level. If you and your new doc try that, make sure you go to an imaging center that's willing to take time with it. CT's are like MRIs; they take "slices" through you and render what each slice looks like on the output film or CD. If the slices are too wide, caused by trying to rush people through the machine, the slices are very likely to miss the details you need to figure out what's happening.
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Laura - L5S1 Charitee
C5/6 and 6/7 Prodisc C
Facet problems L4-S1
General joint hypermobility

Jim - C4/5, C5/6, L4/5 disk bulges and facet damage, L4/5 disk tears, currently using regenerative medicine to address

"There are many Annapurnas in the lives of men" Maurice Herzog
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