[Spiritwalker42]

Where to start? First off I have been a very active and competitive person over the years. I wrestled in high school, college and in the Navy. I started competitive bike racing in '89.
In '02, while at work one day, I was in a precarious position holding something over head exerting myself pretty well... felt a burning in between my right scapula and spine. From there that's all she wrote. Stayed in great pain for a few weeks until seeing a surgeon and found a badly herniated disk at C6-C7. At this time I was working alot and not cycling much. I ended up getting a ti cage fusion in Nov '02.. In '04 got a job that enabled my to start focusing on my cycling training and racing again. It had always been a dream of mine to eventually race at the Professional level. After getting married in '05, my life style really leveled out and at the age of 38 started racing better than ever before. In the summer of '07 I did well enough to upgrade to Semi-Pro... Later that summer I was hit by a car while on a training ride and after months of trying to get a good diagnosis, found myself at John Hopkins who gave me a referral to Yale... The Yale Neuro was by far the best I had seen. The doctors I saw in VA were terrible. They didn't properly look at all my symptoms to assess what was going on. One symptom I had that I got tired of telling people b/c of the blank stares I got back when telling them was this intermittent left foot pain that was very bad. When I got to Yale and gave the surgeon my MRI, (I didn't tell him about the foot pain) he took one look and told me that he wouldn't be surprised if I had left foot or leg pain. I about fell over!! wth?! You have to be your own advocate. I learned more about the spine and body than I ever bargained for going through this. Anyways, wanting to get back to racing and maybe eventually turn Pro, I got a Prodisc-C. It took a year and a half but I got back to racing and turned Pro. 2011 was a good active year of racing. I brought up the rear end of the Pro races but I was living the dream, relatively pain free.

Now I am dealing with bad decision making and lower back issues. I was doing big stupid snowboard jumps in '04 and had a very bad wreck where I landed on my left pubis.... I felt my whole back crack from tailbone to neck... my butt hurt for months.... eventually is leveled out and was manageable.

Now b/c of that wreck my bodily injury has manifested over time.. The last 6 months I have been limited from activities and in quite a bit of pain and of course a bit of depression... I have seen a pain management specialist.. had SI joint injections, L3-L5 bi-latteral injections and eventually L3-L5 medial nerve branch ablation which has given a bit of relief but there are many layers to the pain.

I have a 3.5 year old and a 7 month old... My little girl wants me to teach her to surf one day... I used to be a very active surfer... and dream of doing this... I know I have made bad decisions in what I did with my body, especially with the snowboarding thing. That wreck was by far the greatest/worst impact I ever felt on my body. I now have DDD from S1-L3 as a result. I am in hopes of getting my health back and would like to hear what some others dealing with similar issues have done.

I flew up to Yale recently and I am considering LDR ALIF at S1-L5, L5-L4 with Prodisc-L at L3-L4. I have also been researching other options... Considering M6 work.. and have contacted a place in Germany where Dr. Chavel is... also looked into Stem Cell therapy but I think I am to far advanced DDD to get real benefit...

Please don't flame me for being an idiot and putting myself in this position, I beat myself up enough over it....
I will try and include some pictures of my lower back so you all can see what I am dealing with...

Thank you, Ken