My t-spine
It's time to bring you all up to date on my saga. I've been mostly absent for a while as I've been getting worse and worse for the last few months. It's been frustrating as my early success following my cervical ADR surgery in April was so dramatic. All of the symptoms we did the surgery for are completely gone or dramatically improved. Unfortunately, I have new symptoms that have progressed from annoying, all the way to nearly disabling. The new pain is down below my shoulder blades, centrally located. Until last weekend, it remained a deep aching pain that got worse through the day and worse with uptime. Also, any time spent working with my hands in front of me (like washing dishes!) really provoked the pain and muscle spasms.
It seemed as if the reconfiguration of my spine with my 4-level surgery might have provoked things. I'm taller following my surgery and I have always carried my head too far forward and now it's on a longer lever arm. I thought that things were simply muscular. A couple of weeks ago, I got facet injections T2 - T8, both sides. The results were quite dramatic as 1/2 hour after the injections, I was able to sit up and work at my computer. This was the test for me because going into the injections I was way flared up and unable to do that at all. I was comfortable for another 45 minutes, then as the injectant was wearing off, I was back in pain and unable to sit again.
A very thorough hands-on exam revealed scalenes and pectorals all very short, hence pulling me into the poor posture I described above. That gives me hope that it is muscular and that PT; strengthening the weak muscels, lengthening the too short muscles, might be effective. Last week, I started PT and gentle pool sessions. Following that I'm way flared and the pain has transitioned from the ache, to more severe axial pain.
I saw my GP today to get referral back to pain management and spine surgeon. He also ordered a new thoracic MRI. I have one from February that showed the T1-T2 herniation. My fear is that the blown T1-2 is just the start of a series of thoracic spine issues. There are other disc problems that might have been provoked by PT. I don't know what to think about all this, but it really sucks to be back into pain management and trying to function when I'm so impaired.
All imaging of the hardware implanted this April looks great. It will probably be a few weeks before the referral is processed and I'm on calendar for the MRI. (ain't managed care great.... plus $250 copay for MRI!) It will be interesting to see the advantage of the ProDisc-C Nova's and the more MRI friendly titanium plates, but still with cobalt chrome joint surfaces. We'll see.
All the best,
Mark
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