u/ashleymichael2009

Long story short I had my life ruined by a failed neck surgery, but one of the mystery symptoms that started was severe mid back pain when I’m upright. So I spend hours a day laying on my side. I’ve been begging for help and also asking about my revision cervical fusion I knew it did not fuse right.. so I did finally find someone to do a medial branch block in my thoracic spine I can try (already did epidural).

Problem is I just met with a well regarded neurosurgeon who basically said I did not fuse at either of my cervical spine levels and that it could be referred pain. He said I should get some cervical nerve blocks before having a convo about a posterior fusion.. I’m in desperate times.. should I get both blocks done in both thoracic and cervical? I’ve been barking up wrong trees it feels like for 4 years now. He said don’t bother doing the T spine because of my MRI but…

So not only did I have a failed artificial disc at C5C6, but now as I suspected for years my revision to fusion did not fuse like literally at all. To make matters worse my second acdf at C4C5 which was done separately after that also likely is not fused and I didn’t even consider this level I was focused on the other. I’ve been begging surgeons in my state to help me as I could see there was no bone growth and many kept saying nothing is wrong even at 3 months post op said I was 100% fused. I decided to see an out of state neurosurgeon that handles complex cases and he literally confirmed all of this.

I’ve been damn nearly housebound riddled with severe pain going on 4 years now since ADR attempt. Will I even get relief if I consider a posterior fusion? I don’t know what prevented my fusion I’m only 35 but I do have an autoimmune disease.

So I had my third round of Botox with him this week for bilateral NTOS. My second I seemed to get less results but and at points it seemed to flared me. In previous appointments he seemed certain that surgery was in my imminent future and he was confident that it would be a great relief for me..

But now this appt he kind of implied that Botox even if it does work randomly shouldn’t be a long term thing which I thought it could buy time before surgery. He also now says that surgery may not be a great idea for me anymore - and at most maybe a scalenectomy but I’m reading in these groups people say it’s a waste of time to do alone. The only other thing that changed was I am using my VA insurance with them and not anthem to reimburse these appts with him but surely I hope that was not a factor in changing my care. The only complex part of my case is I had several failed neck surgeries and my symptoms are kinda intertwined with what happened in all that. Always I guess wondering anyone else out there have appts that are kinda all over the place?

My last PM appt, the NP said she wanted me to meet with the doctor that bought out the practice before she would increase me to 10 mg oxy (been at 7.5). So today I present to her with all the stuff I’m doing (TOS Botox, meeting with 10th or more spine surgeon just this month). She said I can see your trying so we’ll continue with the plan of adding an extra 7.5 mg per day. I almost just said forget it in my mind.. but I said that’s not what we discussed last time.

So she gave me another proposal try it for one week Rx and we will call you if it doesn’t work then will increase. My first pain clinic shook me to my core in multiple ways this is my second clinic, I spend days before each month in a true panic so none of this has been easy. I wouldn’t even be here if I didn’t have that fucking first spine surgery.

Hopefully someone can understand what I am asking. If the vertebral space was over-distracted by placing too large of a disc - is something like that fixed once you revise to a fusion? Or it depends on the surgeons approach during the revision?

I’m years into cervical adr hell and since had a revision 3 years ago. I’m plagued with the pain that started right after mid back prevents me from standing walking etc over 5 mins. I constantly am racking my head trying to save my life as each year it becomes impossible. I had a surgeon suggest he had heard of this specific pain referred from being over distracted from adr. I don’t want to beg them to burn my thoracic nerves if that’s not my issue because well what the hell would that feel like.