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Ruptured Disk in Neck


CHA-LEE

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Good luck. Had the same issue more or less last fall. I got a few shots where they insert the needle in my shoulder and push it up. Weird feeling. It helped but I stll feel it in my neck as stiffness and local discomfort. I take ibuprofen and tramadol to help. Probably going to end up with surgery but not till I cant take it anymore.

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Panda Meister! Don't know how you feel about this but I can teach you some YOGA for it. Also, there is trigger point work you can do to aid the soft tissue healing in ways that will surprise you. You do it yourself using a Thera-Cane. VERY little chance of hurting yourself and it can make you much more comfortable! Hope I run into you at a match soon so I can talk to you if you're interested! Sorry to hear of this turbulence in your flight path!!

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Hay CHA-LEE,

I had problems with my lower back for about 5 years. I went to Chriopractors, had Epridual Injections, Physical Thearpy the hole nine yards. But seem like I would always do some little something that would screw it up again, just little things. Well to make a long story short, we were moving something and I stooped down to go under a conveyor, went to my knees and could not get up. L5 was ruptured on the right side and L4 was bulging on the left side. It has been at least 20 years ago, and I must say that I am glad I had it done. One thing thought, I had physical thearpy for 6 weeks, 5 day a week, 8 hours a day, and they know what they were doing. I have very little scar tissue. One thing, if you smoke (STOP). Smoking will restrict the blood flow to the injured area, and it even worse in the lower back. If you have surgery (GIVE IT TIME TO HEAL). Best of luck.

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Cha-Lee,

I'm a Chiropractor in PA and I'm wishing you well. If you have any questions, we get great results with very conservative treatment all the time. Don't hesitate to ask anything, I'll do what I can. Don't give up hope :cheers:

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Charlie,

Many disc herniations will improve over time without intervention. I've had a diffuse bulging disc (not as focal as a disc herniation) with intermittent right thumb pain and numbness and occ. lateral arm pain for several years. It comes and goes. It's amazing how often I see follow up MRI's where the disc pathology is improved without therapy. It is also conversely true that pt's can get worse symptomatically where their MR images are the same or better. So make sure to be treated based on symptoms, not images. You can ask your MD if epidural injections are an option, they often work and IMO are a MUCH better first (or second) choice than discectomy and anterior cervical fusion. Another option that often works for many people, including me, is physical therapy - you just need to find the right person. In fact, I would not let anyone convince me of the necessity of surgery unless I have persistent muscle weakness and atrophy (in the nerve distribution of the cervical disc level) and/or severe sensory loss. I'd never let anyone talk me into surgery just for pain. Just my .02. You can call me if you have other questions.

What he said. I work in MRI and I see exactly this on a daily basis. Surgery is a LAST resort. Explore every non-surgical option. You have to give it time. I've had a bad neck for years. It comes and goes. Physical therapy when necessary. It works but isn't an overnight fix. Rest. Learning proper lift mechanics. Surgery - no way.

And your age is to your benefit.

Good luck and I hope you're feeling better!

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I wanted to post an update to my situation. The natural healing process continues in the right direction. The mega pain is over with and now I only experience a dull ache in the base of my neck once in a while. I can still generate the numb/tingling right arm situation by bending the wrong way but even that is significantly reduced. I still have a little bit of constant numbness and tingling in my trigger finger but that is getting better as well. Right now I am about 80% back to normal and its improving a little each day. I am still taking it easy and trying not to overdo any physical activities until at least the end of March. I think that I will be able to come out of this injury without having to get surgery done which is a HUGE relief.

I felt good enough to attend a local match last Sunday and it was nice to get some rounds down range after a 6 week break. Its amazing how much you can forget about shooting when you don’t shoot for 6 weeks. I am slowly working shooting back into my normal schedule but it will be a while before I get back to the local match attendance pace I was on before the injury. Hopefully by April I can get back in the thick of it.

Thank you all for your help and support during my injury. Its much appreciated!!!

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  • 9 years later...

Just had the ACDF procedure done.   Now 4 days post-op.  Pain was severe prior to surgery and for a few days post-op.   Doing nothing was not an option for me.  Still taking Oxy every 4 hours, but dosage is winding down.   Hoping 2 weeks until shooting resumes; 

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11 hours ago, jrdoran said:

Just had the ACDF procedure done.   Now 4 days post-op.  Pain was severe prior to surgery and for a few days post-op.   Doing nothing was not an option for me.  Still taking Oxy every 4 hours, but dosage is winding down.   Hoping 2 weeks until shooting resumes; 

 

I wish you the best in your recovery.

 

This thread brings back some horrible pain and frustration memories. I think it took a full year to recover as much as it was going to. My C6/C7 disk rupture resulted in permanent feeling loss in my right hand pointer finger and thumb along with a patch of numbness on the top of my forearm. Relearning how to "Feel" the trigger with a partially numb trigger finger was a difficult process. The real bummer is that about 2 years after the C6/C7 rupture I had another disk rupture right below at the C7/C8 level and that dramatically affected my Left arm and shoulder. Obviously the pain was insane for months but when that finally subsided I was left with permanent numbness in my left hand thumb which sucks but isn't horrible. What was horrible is that I lost about 50% of my grip and twisting strength because some of the forearm muscles stopped firing. I also had some shoulder strength loss when moving my arm in a vertical motion. After about a year of daily PT I was able to rebuild my grip strength back to about 90% of what it was but the twisting strength is still only about 60% of what it was. The twisting strength loss makes weak hand shooting super difficult for me, but I do my best to work with what I got.

 

By the time my neck injuries healed to the point to not being in continual pain my Dr said that the numbness and strength damage is likely unrecoverable, even if they did a fusion or artificial disk replacement. They also said that I wasn't a good candidate for the Artificial Disk replacement because the ligaments associated with these disks were too beat up. My Dr basically said, if you are not in continual pain, then its too risky to attempt a fusion or disk replacement. He also said that even though your herniated disks may heal in the short term there is a very likely chance that they will blow out again later in life and you will be faced with the decision on doing a fusion again. They basically said its best to wait as long as you can before doing a fusion as that will put more pressure on the disks above and below the fusion which will likely lead to additional disk ruptures. 

 

So I am in the "Calm Before the next Storm" scenario when it comes to my neck. I do my best to improve my posture at work, and setup my bed and pillows so that it doesn't put my neck in funky angles when I sleep. So far its been working good and I hope this strategy works for the long term. My only hope is that once my neck blows out again my super active Practical Shooting days will be behind me.

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wow, quite a journey you've been on.    I too have significant weakness and some tingling.  Saw Dr. today, he said time will tell if 100% comes back or something less, but he felt outlook was good.   Amazing you did daily PT.   I've got work / family / hobby to live and can't imagine spending time daily on PT; 

 

 

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11 hours ago, jrdoran said:

wow, quite a journey you've been on.    I too have significant weakness and some tingling.  Saw Dr. today, he said time will tell if 100% comes back or something less, but he felt outlook was good.   Amazing you did daily PT.   I've got work / family / hobby to live and can't imagine spending time daily on PT; 

 

 

 

I went to the Hospital a few times for PT to get an understanding of what exercises and movements they wanted me to do, then I simply did that stuff on my own at home. If you want to recover as fully as you can, you need to stay on top of the PT. Just keep in mind that this type of injury, surgery or not, doesn't have a fast recovery. For each of my disk rupture events it was at least a year of significantly circumvented strength and numbness before it leveled out to what it ultimately settled into.

 

The good thing I took out of it was that it forced me to reevaluate and change all of my gun handling, recoil management, and transition movement skills. It made me optimize these skills to use more of my natural body structure vs over powering things with muscle alone. I am not sure if I would have discovered that stuff as quickly in my shooting career without being forced to due to the neck injuries.  

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On 7/31/2020 at 10:55 AM, CHA-LEE said:

 

I went to the Hospital a few times for PT to get an understanding of what exercises and movements they wanted me to do, then I simply did that stuff on my own at home. If you want to recover as fully as you can, you need to stay on top of the PT. Just keep in mind that this type of injury, surgery or not, doesn't have a fast recovery. For each of my disk rupture events it was at least a year of significantly circumvented strength and numbness before it leveled out to what it ultimately settled into.

 

Your advice is really hitting home the last 2 weeks during recovery.  I definitely under estimated the recovery.   Strange how much strength and coordination in upper body I have lost.  I feel weak and uncoordinated in my arms and upper chest .   Neither of which I expected.  

 

Pain is getting better.  Thanks for the advice.

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8 hours ago, jrdoran said:

 

Your advice is really hitting home the last 2 weeks during recovery.  I definitely under estimated the recovery.   Strange how much strength and coordination in upper body I have lost.  I feel weak and uncoordinated in my arms and upper chest .   Neither of which I expected.  

 

Pain is getting better.  Thanks for the advice.

 

Don't be surprised if you have to "Relearn" how to move. I know I did for both of my ruptured disk scenarios. It sucks for sure.

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  • 1 year later...

I wish I had run across this earlier, I might have been able to help.

 

In 2005 my C5-C6 disc herniated.  Immediate and intense shooting pain down my arm starting where the bicep meets the shoulder and ended in my thumb and forefinger.  They wanted to do fusion (ACDF).  The problem was that the adjacent discs (at C4-C5 and C6-C7) were degenerating also, so a fusion would have accelerated the degeneration of those adjacent discs.  By the time I was 65 or 70 I would have had cascading fusions to the point where my entire neck would be immobile.

 

At the time, there were no disc replacements available that were approved by the FDA.  So, I decided to wait.  Plus, by this time I was involved in a claim with the VA as the original injury likely happened when I was on active duty.  By the time I had the disc replaced, 7 years had passed.  My surgeon said that although the disc replacement would remove the pressure on the nerve root at C5-C6 (the source of my pain), he said he could not guarantee that my pain would go away.  It might be permanent.

 

I'm happy to report that a year after my surgery, all pain and numbness were gone.

 

Here's the thing - surgeons have NO IDEA what the outcome of a surgery will be.  Any surgeon who says otherwise is lying.  A good friend who is a surgeon told me that "Once the scalpel touches the skin, all bets are off."  That doesn't mean that there aren't good surgeons, it just means that a good surgeon will not make guarantees one way or the other, for bad, or good outcomes.  I found a guy who was extremely humble, extremely good, and made no promises.

 

I got 6 second opinions (or a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th opinion).  What I found is a lot of guys - even surgeons - have no idea what they are talking about.  By the time I was done doing my research, I knew as much about ACDF/ACDR surgeries than most of the doctors I was speaking with (other than actually performing them).  I knew outcomes, I knew percentages, I had the results of clinical studies, etc.  I knew exactly what I was getting into before I agreed to be cut on.

 

I had a Prodisc-C inserted.  My surgeon was in and out in about 40 minutes.  I left the hospital the same day with a hard collar, and removed the collar on day 4.  I probably could have removed it on day 2 if I had wanted to.  Disc replacements don't need to fuse.  The guy I picked to do my surgery is the guy oncologists call when they need help unwrapping a cancerous tumor from around the spinal cord.  He could have done my surgery in his sleep.

 

Lessons:  Be your own advocate.  Don't take anyone's word on anything.  Do your own research.  See doctors - a lot of doctors.  Ask questions - a lot of questions.  Make people dread seeing you walk through the door because they know you are going to ask them a dozen more questions.  Learn to not care what they think.  This is your life, no one is going to take care of you better than you are.  Remember that wherever and whenever you quit, that's what you're settling for.

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In the fall of 2020, after two karate lessons, I started having these exact symptoms.  As you know, this is the kind of pain that hydrocodone doesn't even touch.  MRI showed a 3.5mm bulge at the C5-C6.  For some reason, (COVID) i think, it took be weeks to get in to see the specialist and by that time, I had no more pain or symptoms of any kind.  I've since learned that certain shoulder exercises will sometimes aggravate it and Aleve will get it calmed back down.  I never want to experience that kind of pain again.

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  • 1 month later...

I know this is an older thread, but my osteopath got me in traction and it saved me from surgery.

 

You can't stop, cheat on the daily time, mess with the recommended weight in the bag, follow the Dr. directions, and above all learn to completely relax. The relaxation part  was the biggest and most difficult thing to do. It took a few weeks but once I found out I was not REALLY relaxing my upper body, I made progress getting the herniated disk back to normal and not needing the traction, or surgery.  

 

This was nearly 30 years ago and I haven't had a relapse. For anyone going through this, give traction a try.

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  • 1 year later...

Boy, this thread has had quite a long life, eh?

 

I, too, ruptured my C6/7 disc, in July of 2017. It was unrelenting 24/7 agony. Physical therapy seemed to be helping, then it stopped helping, then things got worse. The first two fingers of my right hand were numb, my upper back and right forearm were in constant pain, and I lost most of the strength in my right tricep.

 

Like Rasro said above, you have to be your own advocate. I started interviewing surgeons.

 

I had disc replacement surgery (Mobi-C) on 2017-12-28. When I woke up in recovery it was like a switch had been flipped. The pain was gone and I could feel my fingers again.

 

Sadly the strength in my arm has not fully returned and probably never will. That's a result of waiting too long. If you're in this boat, don't just let things happen to you, take charge.

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