Adventures in Cervical Stenosis

So for the past 2 and a half years or so, I have been dealing with some pretty serious and somewhat random physical problems as a result of pressure on my spinal cord and other nerves located in my neck. The snapshot of the MRI below is a decent illustration of the culprits - the cervical disc between my C6 and C7 vertebrae and, to a lesser extent, the cervical disc between my C5 and C6 vertebrae. For those keeping score at home, the C6/C7 disc is the 5th black disky looking thing from the top, and the C5/C6 disc is the black disky thing above the C6/C7. The long white and gray snake that appears to be crawling out of the noggin and down the back of the spine is the spinal cord. The white part of the snake is spinal fluid, also known as cerebrospinal fluid (but more affectionately referred to by yours truly as shmazz). It's delicious. I shit you not.

Anyway, The dents in the white part of the snake (the shmazz) that can be seen at the C5/C6 and C6/C7 levels are known as stenosis.  Stenosis in the neck makes the snake (the spinal cord) surly all the way down. It can and does cause numbness, weakness and pain in lots of places that are below the compressed area including arms, back, legs and may even affect the bowels and bladder in severe cases.  As if that is not offensive enough, the pressure from the ruptured discs can actually cause headaches - seriously crushing headaches. Essentially it makes an otherwise healthy 35 year old guy feel like an 89 year old great great grandmother (no offense to the 89 year old great great grandmothers out there reading this).



So when I realized I had this problem, I began doing a ton of research to find out how to fix it. One of my first steps was to visit a chiropractor who I continued to see for almost a year. This was a mistake, and might have actually worsened my condition. Of course while he was making my condition worse, he was also preaching about how terrible surgery is, and how 99.9% of spine surgeries are failures. I could write a very long blog entry about this bozo (he actually called himself a Doctor, which should be illegal) and the bozo field of chiro in general, and I may some time, but for now I will just say that joining a secret cult devoted solely to the worship of all of the paintbrush manufacturers that existed in 1954 would have helped my condition more than chiro did, and would have cost considerably less money.  By the way, the chiropractic practice I went to was totally a cult.  

I started to investigate the surgical fix. Initially the surgical options that were presented to me were not terribly appealing. I was told that the gold standard treatment for my condition is to remove the herniated discs from the front of the neck, and replace them with bone (usually harvested from cadavers these days - used to come from the hip), then cover that with a metal plate which is attached by driving pedical screws into the surrounding vertebrae - a method that is commonly referred to as a fusion, since eventually the goal is that inserted bone fuses with the vertebrae on either end. Here is a video of a fusion taking place (Warning: it's kind of gross...actually, it's totally F'n disgusting):



All of the orthopedic and neurosurgeons I consulted with said essentially the same thing:  that fusion would probably fix my problem, but fusion (particularly at more than one level) is likely to cause early degeneration of the discs above and/or below the fusion site.  This is particularly true in young active patients.  So you are looking at probably having more problems down the road and possibly more surgery to attempt repair.  They all recommended I get an artificial disc replacement  ("ADR") instead.   More  to come about ADR and how the hell this small titanium device has motivated me to fly to Bangalore, India to let a stranger cut a 3 inch hole in the front of my neck, push my muscles, tracea and esophagus out of the way while he pokes (technical medical term) around my spinal cord for up to 4 hours....