[runner]

Truthfully, I haven't been on here and I feel a little guilty. Some days I want to document this crazy spine odyssey and others, I don't.

I am doing something a little different here, I am attempting to document what to me is something I have been looking towards for a while. But first: Since November, 2012, I knew there was something majorly wrong with my spine. After a long recovery from my second major spine surgery an ADR at L5/S1, I had one noticeable deficit, the toes on my right foot would sometimes be partially numb. Doc said it was most likely permanent nerve damage, I wasn't so sure.
Then, they went permanently partially numb, in other words, I had some feeling in them.
Late Nov. 2012, in less than a few minutes, my toes on my left foot went numb. I had the misfortune at about the same to have my cervical spine became symptomatic. The numbness progressed and I started getting major pains in my toes, heels.

I always knew that my cervical spine may one day blow up. It started with my right hand cramping, so I went to an orthopaedic surgeon who was known to be a great hand doctor. Couldn't get in right away to see him, saw his P.A. Diagnosis: most likely carpel tunnel syndrome. Finally saw the hand guru, he suggested x-rays of my neck to see if that was the problem because I told him I did not have a great neck. He looked at the x-rays and told me the problem was with my neck. Told me to get an EMG study, then go to a surgeon right away. So I got the study, no surprise, my neck was a mess, much worse than I could even imagined. I called my surgeon back up and left a message that so and so told me to see you for my neck.

So, I had some thecal sac compression and I asked, "Could my leg symptoms be from my neck?" Both my surgeon and pain doc said, "No".
Well, like with my back, we tried conservative treatment. Finally,after I kept failing exercises in PT, my PT wrote a note to my surgeon, saying I needed surgery and he needed to evaluate me again soon. My surgeon was incredibly busy and they put me in the schedule as soon as they could. Then of course, the surgery was cancelled, and I waited again, until I had it in May, 2013.
As I recovered, I nudged my doctors, like hey, my back is giving me fits. I was politely told to let my neck recover, before we went back to my back. Too many problems at once.

My back kept nudging back, in August, my back started hurting again and then the next month, I had sciatica in both my hamstrings. AGAIN. I was taking pain pills more for my back than my neck. I was in another insurance hell, this time with WC.
My fears about my back were confirmed, September last year, by the doctor who did an EMG/NCS on my lumbar spine. She told me there, I had a compressed nerve at L5/S1. The worse part of the report was something was moderately compressing nerves at L5/S1 and I had a moderate loss of nerve axons.

I knew when I got ProDisc ADRs at L4/5 and L5/S1 if I had further problems, the discs would cause artifact on an MRI or a plain CT. My insurance company, denied I even had radiculopathy. After a bit of a fight from them, we (my two doctors and me) and a few other medical people, have kept on fighting.
On Wednesday, I felt like I had won the war when my CT Myelogram was completed.

R