I had this done on 1/11/12. My problems started after a car accident and the symptoms appeared one month later when I woke up with excruciating neck pain. I suffered for 7 months-tried all the narcotic meds they prescribed(which do little for nerve pain) Neurontin, which made me dehydrated and I had to go to the ER, PT which made it worse, and one epidural. My problems were a herniated disc at c4-5 and a herniated disc that was a central cord protrusion at c5-6. I also had foraminal narrowing.
Was sent to some idiot who told me my MRI was normal for a woman my age and that because I had pain on both sides of my upper body it wasn't my spine causing the problems. He then gave me a shot of a muscle relaxer in the neck and manipulated it. Later found out that's the worse thing you can do to someone with herniated discs and spinal stenosis.
When I started to get numbness in my left leg I decided to try the other hospital system in my city. The ER doc referred me to their on call NS in November and I saw him in December. He said I had a significant spinal cord compression that needed to be addressed and said that since all the conservative treatment hadn't worked the next step was surgery. It was my choice to either wait or do it now if I was sick of the pain. He also threw in the compression at c4-5 saying it would help the arm pain. I said I wanted the surgery and it was a go.
It's now been almost 5 weeks and I'm so glad I had this surgery. The pain in my muscles is completely gone. I still have some numbness in my left arm though. On the day of the surgery the surgeon did some resistance tests on my hands and I couldn't prevent him from pushing my left hand down. I also had the Hoffmann sign-that's a test that tells them if you have nerve impingement. During the post op appointment the hoffman sign was okay but I still had a little bit of a hard time with the resistance test on the left hand. The left arm was the worse but my right arm was starting to hurt bad right before the surgery-I was told that was because the disc was compressing my spinal cord. So that contradicts the idiot I was referred to in August.
I'm also glad I decided to go to the other ER. If I hadn't who knows where I would be now. The pain doctor the first ER sent me to did one epidural during the 13 weeks I saw him. To his credit he was the first and only medical person that I saw before my wonderful neurosurgeon who said I was probably going to need surgery.
I have no second thoughts about doing this. The stabbing pain in my neck and arms are gone and I'm not spending my days and nights with a heating pad. I had a bleeding ulcer in the early 90's and even this beats that as the worse pain in my life.
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I had this done on 1/11/12. My problems started after a car accident and the symptoms appeared one month later when I woke up with excruciating neck pain. I suffered for 7 months-tried all the narcotic meds they prescribed(which do little for nerve pain) Neurontin, which made me dehydrated and I had to go to the ER, PT which made it worse, and one epidural. My problems were a herniated disc at c4-5 and a herniated disc that was a central cord protrusion at c5-6. I also had foraminal narrowing.
Was sent to some idiot who told me my MRI was normal for a woman my age and that because I had pain on both sides of my upper body it wasn't my spine causing the problems. He then gave me a shot of a muscle relaxer in the neck and manipulated it. Later found out that's the worse thing you can do to someone with herniated discs and spinal stenosis.
When I started to get numbness in my left leg I decided to try the other hospital system in my city. The ER doc referred me to their on call NS in November and I saw him in December. He said I had a significant spinal cord compression that needed to be addressed and said that since all the conservative treatment hadn't worked the next step was surgery. It was my choice to either wait or do it now if I was sick of the pain. He also threw in the compression at c4-5 saying it would help the arm pain. I said I wanted the surgery and it was a go.
It's now been almost 5 weeks and I'm so glad I had this surgery. The pain in my muscles is completely gone. I still have some numbness in my left arm though. On the day of the surgery the surgeon did some resistance tests on my hands and I couldn't prevent him from pushing my left hand down. I also had the Hoffmann sign-that's a test that tells them if you have nerve impingement. During the post op appointment the hoffman sign was okay but I still had a little bit of a hard time with the resistance test on the left hand. The left arm was the worse but my right arm was starting to hurt bad right before the surgery-I was told that was because the disc was compressing my spinal cord. So that contradicts the idiot I was referred to in August.
I'm also glad I decided to go to the other ER. If I hadn't who knows where I would be now. The pain doctor the first ER sent me to did one epidural during the 13 weeks I saw him. To his credit he was the first and only medical person that I saw before my wonderful neurosurgeon who said I was probably going to need surgery.
I have no second thoughts about doing this. The stabbing pain in my neck and arms are gone and I'm not spending my days and nights with a heating pad. I had a bleeding ulcer in the early 90's and even this beats that as the worse pain in my life.
February 12, 2012 - 10:20pmThis Comment
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