Hi,
I am a 44 year old retired NYPD Sergeant and ford F350 owner/member of their web forum... thus the silly screen name
. First of all I read many posts and my heart goes out to those of you who have suffered for years with such conditions. This is my first experience with neck/back issues and it was an eye-opener. I have always been great with pain, to the point were doctors refused to believe I had serious injuries until, test/X-ray etc. came back...but this was the worst. Not that the pain was the worst, just the constance of the pain and "weird" feeling of having central nervous system disruptions. My entire body was screwed up, loss of control of movement, spasms, tingling, no sleep, the drugged out feeling...it sucked to put it bluntly. I was praying to feel the relative comfort of a broken bone!
Anyway, I came to this site in November, a week after being diagnosed with C5/6 herniation causing numbness in my right hand and severe cord impingement along with C6-7 disc protrusion. Probably started happening about 17 years ago in a bad car wreck, but I ignored all symptoms and continued playing a ton of high impact sports. Even flag football league until 2 years ago..thought I was gonna pull a Brett Favre and unretire this spring, until this happened
. Also played 8-10 hours racquetball weekly plus monthly weekend competitions.
Anyhow for years I just thought those pains in the middle of my back were spasms and shrugged it off. As far as the recent issue, I played pain free in a tournament all weekend and woke up very much in pain on Monday, and had numbness by Tuesday. I sought out a spine doc and then a second Doc. After X-rays/MRI/EMG they both agreed on a wait and see approach and then fusion if no progress (that was the beginning of November).
Now it is 7 weeks later and pain not really the issue at all, but numbness in right thumb and no nerve signal or control of the right supraspinatis and infraspinatis is causing wasting of muscle. EMG Doc, says this is chronic...guess I never realized it??? Also have nerve disruption on the left side but to a lesser extent. EMG says nerve problems at both disc levels.
I have continued doing my research and have gotten a plan of a 2 level ADR with Prodisc - C Nova at C67 and C56 from Dr. Bertagloni in Germany. I also have an appointment with Dr. Bitan in NYC in early January. I like the concept of ADR and getting prepared to make final choice if that is the way it goes. Really I am open to any solution, ADR, Hybrid or even something "minimally invasive (I doubt it), waiting a little longer, etc. My issue seems to be a little unique....I have little pain, and I am very functional but my nerves are really screwed up. Reflexes very exaggerated on left side of body and zero reflexes in right arm, along with loss of feeling and the muscle control I mentioned before. With all that said, I really dont feel bad... however I won't stand-by while muscles essentially die and wait for the other shoe to drop. Weird thing is though, I could sprint into the hospital if need be...makes opting for surgery a bit of an exercise in will power and faith :0)
As I side note, as luck would have it 3 weeks before my diagnosis, my business partner (retired NYS Trooper) backed out of a 2 level cervical fusion a few days before the surgery. He is also thinking about ADR...you can't make this stuff up.
Thanks for such a great site, and enjoy the Holidays!
Scott