r/SpinalStenosis

got a cervical MRI. Symptoms ice been having for the past years are neck pain along with the side of my right head feeling numb and tingly. Shoulder pain, achy and sharp. Pain radiating down my right arm. I wake up with my right arm asleep usually. Any idea what these images show?

Hello everyone. Where do I start…I’ll start with how I’m doing today instead of making all of you go through 5 years of my injury. It’s been a long lonely road for a lot of you who have this injury. My heart feels for all of you ❤️❤️❤️ NEVER GIVE UP!

First, I’ll give you a rundown on how it happened. I was hit by a driver who fell asleep in his truck and he crossed the double yellow line on a two lane road with a speed limit of at least 55mph. I don’t remember the exact limit, but I do know it was on a country highway near Lubbock, TX. He struck me almost head on. He ended up hitting the driver side front.

I had to have my C-3,4,5 fused. Woke up after surgery not being able to move anything. Wow, the thoughts that ran through my mind initially….similar to probably all of you who woke up from surgery like I did.

It happened five years ago on October 7, 2021. Today, I am playing basketball, running full speed, no assistance, full sexual function and healthier than even before the accident. I just recently in the past two months became virtually pain free in my back to where I can sustain jogging/exercising without the pain stopping me. This has increased my fitness dramatically.

So what did I do? I had completely changed my diet when I turned 50 (now 57), two years prior to my accident. I went from 205lbs down to 170 in just one month on the carnivore diet (now I do intermittent fasting with more variety). I’d been on the diet for two years before the accident. I believe my good health prior to the accident was a very big factor in keeping me alive in that car as I waited for the ambulance and then the jaws of life to get me out. Thank god I could not feel anything because if I did, I don’t know if I could have handled the pain.

Over the past five years, I have seen physical therapists, chiropractors, and massage therapists. I did go to physical therapy for about 3/4 months initially. I stopped going because it was so painful. I left in tears virtually every session. One day it broke me. I stepped out of the therapy room and just cried. I think it finally hit me that day. After that day I never went back to therapy and decided to do it all on my own, every day all day alone in my house working on my body. I am still working on my recovery every moment I’m awake. As long as I feel the result of my accident, I will NEVER give up working on improvement. These days, the improvements are micro, but these micro improvements are HUGE gains. It’s what I look forward to. It’s why I continue to strive for improvement. I’m still seeing and feeling the improvements. Even when I regain 100% function, I will continue to maintain my health because at some point in the future, I believe the results of my fusion surgery WILL affect my life.

Maybe a lot of you don’t believe in chiropractors but I believe they did have a role for me because I was in such a violent car accident throwing my whole body out of alignment. The past three months I’ve been seeing a REAL massage therapist. I searched for a sports massage therapist. In my situation, probably similar to a lot of you (though I do believe no two spinal cord injuries are exactly the same), I had a lot of uncontrollable spasms, tightness, numbness, tingling, and a lot of nerve pain. I could not have people touching my skin because of the pain I’d suddenly feel. Touching over clothes was not as painful.

I wish I would have searched for and found my massage therapist YEARS ago seeing the dramatic improvements in my increased control over my body, significant reduction in uncontrollable spasms, and amazing reduction in the level of pain I felt while moving my body. In the past, the least painful position I could be in was lying down and still it was painful. Today I sleep pain free and through the night. With each visit to my massage therapist, I feel the impact. I see my therapist every 3 weeks for the past 3 months.

I have to say, I made SIGNIFICANT improvements before I found my massage therapist where the average person could never tell I had any problems. They would be shocked that I used to be a quadriplegic, but as soon as I tried to move faster than walking, one could tell something was wrong. My body would make spasm like movements and I didn’t want to move faster than walking because of the pain that it would illicit. Today because of my massage therapist, I play more basketball, go jogging until I want to stop instead of the pain stopping me.

I can’t emphasize the importance of massage in my recovery. My all around muscle function and control has dramatically improved along with significant pain reduction. But, as a man, the return of a fully functioning orgasm sensation was monumental. It was the “last” function in my body that has come back to “normal.” I could not have an erection because there was no sensation. Still had a lot of numbness. I did not really try to have any romantic relationship in the past 5 years up until just the past couple months. I think it’s a combination of confidence returning, people (women) seeing a man that moves with what looks like an “injured animal.” I’ve been on more dates the past month than I did the past 5 years combined.

When I was lying there on that hospital bed after waking up from surgery, there was a wide range of thoughts and emotions that went through me. At the end, I accepted that YES I WAS laying in this bed quadriplegic with tubes in every hole and nothing moving other than my eye lids.

After I accepted my situation, my thoughts switched to how to get back to my life as an active father that I was pre accident. I have two children who are now 12 (daughter) and 9 (son) who I adore and who love their father like no other. My life with my children is what got me out of that bed and to where I am. I never gave up and continued searching for recovery because of the thought of my children having a father who could not get out of bed. I have taken my children on summer long road trips to the four corners of this country the last 5 summers. They have been to 40 of the states camping, fishing, mount biking, kayaking all along. How could I stay in that bed? That was the question that got me out of bed.

When I came to terms quickly in that hospital bed and wanting a different outcome to my children’s lives, I was intensely looking at different parts of my like I used to when I was a child hearing about telekinesis for the first time. I stared at a coke bottle intensely with my eye wide open trying to make a connection. I laid there like this every moment my eyes were open trying to get something to move. I needed to be out of that bed for my children! I would get very emotional when thoughts and pictures of my children lives of the future with a quadriplegic father. It was my motivation. We must have something outside ourselves to fight for in such situations. I’ve come to realize it’s not that I just wanted to recover for my own personal reasons, my motivation was to get back to my life with my two young children.

On day four the limbs on my right side started twitching and having spasms. I could not control my limbs, but they were moving! My next step was to try to control some movement. I once again began trying to controls my right side by intensely looking at the spastic limp. As my hand shook, I tried to curl my fingers. I tried over and over and over again whether it move or not by my doing. Never stopped trying. My right side came back sooner than the left.

On day five, my left side started to spasm more. My left side has been more affected from this. I have more atrophy on the left though lately the strength in my left leg and arm have become more equal in strength and function. Now that all four limbs are at least twitching, I had more encouragement and became more motivated to get out of bed and walk! Over the next 7 days, I continued to lay there still intensely looking at my limbs now trying to control my movements not merely just wanting it to move. One thought I remember while I was lying there in my wrecked car was saying to myself “don’t wait for someone to tell you when you start doing physical therapy, do water you’re able to do NOW.” In the wrecked car, all I could do was just breathe. So, I stared to control my breathing almost meditating. My heart rate at the hospital was below 30 bpm. I had a hard time breathing in the car so I took long slow breaths trying to take the deepest breath to get as much oxygen into me as possible visualizing the oxygen getting to the extremities of my lifeless limbs.

I don’t know how long it took from the point of impact to when the medical arrived, but I just remember counting 100 slow deep breaths multiple times. Even while I could hear the machine that they used to cut me out of my car, I did not lose my breathing cadence. At some point I don’t remember things. I do remember being in the ambulance but after that initial entrance into the ambulance, I don’t remember the ride or being unloaded at the hospital. I just kept counting to 100 with every deep breath over and over and over again. I will mention that I was a 5th degree Black Belt master instructor in Tae Kwon Do where I had a studio for many years, but at the time of the accident, I had retired from teaching a few years prior. So going from doing martial arts to laying flat on a bed with no movement was motivation also.

On day 10, physical therapy came to my hospital room and said they are going to try to get me out of bed and on my feet. The day I woke up from surgery, I was told that they were looking for a long term facility to put me in. I would have a long recovery in therapy. Over the few days after my limbs started to spasm, I made dramatic improvements apparently. I worked hard at lifting my right arm, curl the fingers, flex my right foot. I was not able to control my left side hardly at all until day 8. So on day 10, two therapist came and got me on my feet.

The therapist first got me upright on the edge of the bed. Just that movement of getting me to sit up on the edge of the bed, I suddenly began to sweat profusely and my gown was drenched in a few seconds, then I remember fading out and passed out. When I woke up, they were still standing there at my bed side. I asked them what happened and how I did in therapy. They said I passed out but still had to try to get me on my feet with a walker. Amazingly, they set me back up (didn’t pass out this time) and helped me on my feet and on to a walker and belt around my waist. All they wanted me to do was walk to the door and back to the bed. That was only 10ft to the door but when I got back to the bed, I felt as it was the most exhausting thing I’d ever done! I continued to drench my gown and when I finally laid down, I was so completely exhausted. Never felt so zapped of energy and strength.

Over the next few days, I walked farther and farther with my walker. The second day, I did not sweat at all and my lungs didn’t feel out of breath. Four days after the first encounter with the therapist they released me from the hospital. I didn’t have insurance. I believe they rushed me out of the hospital because I had no insurance. They were going to buy me a bus ticket back to Auburn, AL from Lubbock, TX 14 days after a three level fusion surgery and quadriplegia. I couldn’t believe what they were telling me. They wanted me to sit up straight for two days on a Greyhound bus. In hindsight, I’m glad they forced me to leave the hospital. This action made me take care of myself.

This post has become longer than I originally planned. I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that, NEVER give up, have something/someone outside of just yourself to give you a reason to NEVER give up, you must be relentless in your recovery. FIND A KNOWLEDGEABLE MASSAGE THERAPIST. Because you can’t exercise sufficiently to burn calories, you must change your diet until you can get to a point where you can burn more calories. To me, the “carnivore diet” gave me sufficient protein and FAT. You need lots of both to recover from traumatic injury. Of course you need a good support system, but in my situation, I did not have a caregiver, I’d just gotten divorced, I had just recently moved to a new area so didn’t know anyone in my new town for support, both my parents past away years before. There really was no support system for me. I scoured YouTube for anyone who had recovered from such an injury and I did not find much hope. There were a lot of days of questioning myself as all of you who have gone through similar experiences have had. I also had ALL those thoughts and emotions. Somehow I came out of it. Somehow, I at least am healthier coming out of this and now believe even more that I will be 99.9% recovered with the addition of a great massage therapist. It’s a must for anyone who’s had acute sci imo and experience. Though this post is longer than I expected, it could be much much longer. There’s a lot on a persons mind when you become quadriplegic and going through recovery.

If you are reading this and is quadriplegic, I realize everyone’s recovery is different with sci, and we all have gone through the phase of depression wondering if things will ever get better, look up the guy Kevin Hines. He jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and survived, but what I kept remembering during the initial months after my injury, I kept remembering what this man said as soon as he let go of the bridge. He IMMEDIATELY regretted his choice. As down and distraught as he was to the point he did let go and wanted no more of his problems, he IMMEDIATELY regretted his decision. He SUDDENLY, became clear he wanted to live. Please, NEVER give up. I do know the pain you feel. I felt the loneliness. I felt the feeling of my burden on someone. Makes me want to cry thinking about my experiences back then but also for those of you who have endured and those of you who have recently become paralyzed and completely flip your life. I have had a friend who could not take it anymore few years after he ended up in a wheelchair from texting his gf while driving. His gf left him after a couple years. NEVER GIVE IN. NEVER GIVE UP. ❤️❤️❤️

PS look up Nolan Arbaugh on YouTube and listen to what he says about when he first became quadriplegic and how he wished he would have kept trying to move his limbs just by thinking about making a connection to his body. I came across it when I was looking for answers. Now that he has a chip in his brain, he has stopped trying to move his body, but he believes if he had kept trying to move his limps laying in the hospital, he believes that it would have help him gain movement.

Check out his interview
https://youtu.be/YrGCYiJBk-E?is=vyveyZFWs\_wxQE9l

Just wanted to share a litttle of my story 😊

I was born w kyphoscoliosis. I have spent years ashamed of my body & its condition. I am slowly learning to accept the body that has carried me for 28 years. I was told by my ortho dr that I will need spinal fusion surgery. I have no plan for it, as I suspect I have a form of Ehlers Danlos syndrome. I do not have a true diagnosis for EDs, so without that I am not going to be looking into surgery unless I know for a fact if I have EDS. I am so use to being twisted & crooked that I fear the surgery may leave me off in worse condition but there is no true way of telling. The photo on the left is me standing straight. The second photo on the right is me trying to force my shoulders up to be even & “straighten out “ as you can see my arms go crooked lol.
One of my ortho drs in 2020 told me my scoliosis would not get worse as I was already an adult. He measured my cob angle to be 28 degrees in the thoracic. I just had new X-rays done in April of this year, my thoracic curve is now 40 degrees.
I’m trying my best to cope w having this spinal deformity & embrace it. The human body amazes me & im surprised at how strong it is 💪🏼 they don’t call us warriors for nothing!