Hello Mark,
I have spent the last three months mostly laying on my back suffering from T11/12 grade 5 annular tear with large sequestered fragment. Am in no end of pain but advised by surgeon to give it six months of rest before risking surgery. have always looked after my health and never had such an injury in my life. they are very cruel injuries. had to give up a great job i took up only weeks before.
i've scoured the internet to learn what i could, hoping to find a cure. But there is little good news that i could find. All i could establish has been..........
Discs are a pathetic weak part of our anatomy since most people have damage even if they are not feeling it.
Unlike getting a scratch on our skin, when annular tears commence there is no pain until they are two thirds through disc due to lack of nerves in annular core.
So usually end stage disc bulge or rupture is the first we know of any problem.
Bad location, causes havoc with critical spinal cord and branch nerves.
The disc has very slow and poor healing capacity.
Operations are still pretty crude and can make things worse.
All in all a total nightmare injury and i feel for all who suffer it.
The company mesoblast i hope has a genuine product that does what they are saying. Would be a miracle, in my opinion. It was the most promising looking info i could find and i thought would be of interest to others suffering DDD.
I do not own any shares in the company. i have been too unwell and incapcitated to worry about that side of life. People 'ramp' shares on share trading forums mostly i think. i am not such a person to do such a thing in any place.
For those technically minded this link is of a recent presentation made at world conference in Canada. What impressed me was the actual scans showing 'black' degenerated discs turned into white fully restored discs after one injection of the special stem cells. i hope the treatment is real and that such treatments are available to us asap because these injuries are a nightmare and the surgery can make it worse.
http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/2009091...jktg1nvdyt.pdf