Upcoming surgery

I have been asked privately by several people how I got the the point of deciding to have neck surgery next month. Instead of writing out my answer over and over again I though I would post here the sequence of events.

Of course you know I am not a doctor, but I can tell everyone what I experienced. This started about a year or so ago. On longer rides I would experience numbness and/or tingling in my left hand. I mostly ignored it as I could get off the bike for a minute or two or even just rub my neck while riding and it would go away. Then gradually I started experiencing the same tingling while I was doing anything else, even just sitting at my desk. The numbness/tingling turned into soreness in the forearm then in the upper arm and now finally pain between the shoulder blades.

I do not feel it all the time, but enough that sleeping is uncomfortable and I cannot sit at my desk for extended periods of time. On the bike it resulted first in a lack of concentration as I would need to work out the tingling, then finally to a weakness in my left arm and hand which affected my ability to control the bicycle (mostly brake modulation). One thing that led me to seek professional help was that ibuprofen would not relieve the pain. There was nothing really inflamed for the anti-inflammatory to work on.

First I went to the chiropractor thinking that an adjustment would help. and it did for about 30 minutes, but it only highlighted that I had artificially limited neck movement because of the pain involved. I could still move it all around but in certain spots it hurt and my body adjusted by not allowing my neck to naturally move the ways that caused pain. At this point I know there is a real problem and now just need confirmation.

X-Rays where the second tool used, but X-Rays really can’t show you what is going on inside the spinal column. What we did see was obvious compression between vertebrae C6 and C7, we also could plainly see some bone spurring. That was consistent with the symptoms I was experiencing. Initial thought was that decompression might help, key word for me was might. Icing the neck every two hours for 10-15 minutes does help reduce the tingling/numbness as well as some of the arm/shoulder pain, but it does not eliminate it. Besides I can’t really go around carrying a cooler with me just so I can have a steady supply of ice.

I took my X-Rays and went to our family doctor, she looked and suggested that I see a spine specialist. Her exact words were, as she counted the vertebrae, “5, 6, 7, my God!” The spine specialist looked at the X-Rays and said that they do not tell the whole story and that an MRI would. He did tell me that if I did not want neck surgery that I shouldn’t get the MRI as the compression was already visible and the MRI would just confirm the extent.

MRI can show the doctor much more detail and allow a look inside the spinal column. In my case it indicated that not only was C6/C7 and issue, but C4/C5 would be a future issue. It also showed more arthritis and thickening of the laminar bones cutting off spinal cord movement. Without the MRI it would have been a harder decision to have surgery. The MRI took about 45 minutes from start to finish.

From official diagnosis to surgery will be two months, I only have three weeks left until I have the procedure done.

Other considerations were fix everything or just the immediate issue, what procedure to have, etc. Since my issues were separated by a good disc between C5/C6 fusion was out of the question, also no doctor would/should suggest fusing more than three vertebrae, and in my case it would have been four. Laminoplasty was really the only option. this opens space for the spinal cord to move across all those vertebrae and I still retain neck movement, cleaning (snipping off) some of the spurs is also part of the procedure.

The prognosis is 100% relief from the current symptoms and return to all normal activities. There are risks, paralysis, palsy and infection. The risks are small but they are there. Next week is the pre-operative visit, and surgery is scheduled for July 9th.