Severe herniated disc in c6 c7 vertebrea

I am new here

December 12th changed my life. In November I started complaining about my back, neck, arm, etc hurting, but I wasn't realizing I was complaining about it. The first week of December I started noticing my neck was tightening and my arm and shoulder were starting to hurt. By the 9th I couldn't move my neck and the pain was horrible in my shoulder, I thought I tore a muscle. I made an appointment for the shoulder doctor.

I had excused the neck pain because I fell down 15 steps 7 years ago and my neck always has issues. They did X-rays on Dec 12th and he said my shoulder was fine. I was confused, then he flipped to the neck X-ray and said yuck. I don't want to worry you but I need to you meet with a spine specialist immediately and get an MRI stat. I was in the spine specialist office by the 13th at 2.

The spine specialist in so many words also said yuck when he saw the MRI. I have major nerve compression / pain on the left side and minor on the right. The herniation extends 2/3 of the way into the spinal cord. You could not see the nerves at all on the slice of MRI at that disc level. I am on a few things to try and help with the nerve pain and swelling.

I have had two epidurals. I am wondering what the expectations of pain relief are. My shoulder still kills me in the mornings especially or after working my job. It is so bad that I do still take a pain killer almost every morning, but I try not to take any the rest of the day because I don't want to get adicted to them. The 2nd epidural was 6 days ago.

That doctor want to make sure people had told me how bad my disc was (after looking at the MRI). He said it wasn't the absolute worse, but it was up there with the worst he had seen in his 10 years of doing this. He said people were talking about my disc. I am so glad that I am almost a science experiment at this point it feels. Everyone keeps saying I will probably have to have surgery. They think the fall 7 years ago weakened the disc and it pretty much just exploded and caused all this damage.

Please help,
Michelle

Hi Michelle,

So sorry to hear about your experience. I have dealt with lumbar and sciatica back issues for a number of years, but a few months ago I began experiencing the same symptoms you have described. I just had an MRI in December and have 4 significant disc issues in my neck...I can totally relate but I don't think any of mine are as bad as yours - I have 3 broad protrusions and a bulge with anywhere from mild to severe neural foraminal narrowing and more...my doc said I have the neck of a career linebacker...let's just say I have a whole new interest in watching football now and I have never played football...go figure.

I too face surgery in the coming years but have been told I can hold off for now. I am going to schedule an ESI at my appointment this week.

There are other medications besides pain killers that may be able to help with your symptoms...I take a muscle relaxer (skelaxin) and also a nerve medication (neurontin or gabapentin in the generic form) and also a milder pain killer tramadol that has much less of a medicated feeling to it in addition to oxy. If you are experiencing pain that you would like to try and find some relief for, talk to your doctor about some of the other options, as there are so many and not all are the typical pain killers and still provide relief.

Welcome to the group, sorry for what brought you here, but if you need advice, support, just a few kind words, this place is wonderful. I have had many times where I have felt down about my situation and I come here and always find kind words from wonderful people that really help get me through the tough spots.

Hi there MB...

I will also welcome you to HW..It's a wonderful place filled with people who truly understand what it's like to go from healthy to all of a sudden finding out that our bodies are breaking in places:(

As Nverthesame mentioned, there is a huge difference between being "dependent" on a medication which will happen with most any medication someone takes long term even heart meds, or thyroid meds, etc.....That just means that it has to be tapered up slowly and if going off the medicine, then tapered down slowly to not have any physical withdrawals that can cause issues.

Someone who is truly "addicted" to meds is someone who is craving them to get high, not for pain relief, who takes more than prescribed, who goes to different Drs. or the ER to get only pain meds, or even buy/sell them off the street.

So, unless you have previous addiction issues, I really would not worry about this at all and just take any medication you get as prescirbed and directed by your Dr. And even if you had problems in the past, this doesn't mean you don't deserve decent pain relief, you just need to work with your Dr. and let them know about this and they can help find ways to treat you.

The epidurals are just a standard form of treatment, sometimes done a few times a year and not meant to solve everything or take all the pain away, but hopefully will provide a small amount of pain relief. I still get them a few times a year depending on when a "flare" hits me either in the lumbar or cervical region.

As STC and Nver wrote, there are actual nerve pain medications like Neurontin, Lyrica, or Cymbalta that are very good at taking down that particular pain some notches. It's really trial and errror as you will find all sorts of answers on who did better on which med. I try to not pay much attention to what works/doesn't work for others as it's impossible to know if it will work for you until you try it.

I was lucky in that my fusion surgeries (1st and 3rd) took away the majority of my nerve pain and I was able to go off the Cymbalta.

The good news is that close to 85% of people with spine issues whether it be herniations, bone spurs, etc... can be treated successfully without having any surgery! So we will hope that you are in this group..

And then, even if you need surgery, most people have good results with them. You just won't read about this much online as people who do great aren't on chronic pain boards..LOL...

The other good news is that it's only one herniated disc! I know it doesn't seem that way...but trust me, this is very good! I have 3, very severe ones in both lumbar and cervical and had my surgeries for two other ones in my cervical region.

So, try to take things one step at a time. May I ask what type of Dr. this spine specialist is? Many of us recommend that you see a Board Certified Neurosurgeon (Fellowship trained as well) so that you can make sure that surgery is not needed asap to take the pressure off the spinal cord and fix the herniated disc...

If that is who you saw and they said that surgery is not needed right now that is another good thing because if they thought you were in an emergent situation, they would have scheduled surgery within a few weeks of seeing the MRI.

So, I hope they can come up with a good comprehensive program to help things non surgically for now...

This would include things in addition to injections like setting up a daily exercise plan, sending you to physical therapy, traction, getting a TENS unit, ice, heat, aqua therapy, acupuncture, massage (regular or ultrasound by a PT), biofeedback, etc.

And another type of med that was mentioned that can be very helpful are actual muscle relaxers...These are either Flexeril or Amrix, Robaxin, Skelaxin, Baclofen, or Zanaflex.

Both that and a nerve pain med are a great addition to any type of pain med they are prescribing as they all do different things as you will find that it's never about just relying on one procedure or one medication to take all the pain away...It's going to be some hard work and a lot of different treatments but hopefully it leads you to preventing any surgery and getting your pain levels down.

Glad you found us!

Post Edited (Snowbunny21) : 1/14/2013 11:53:52 AM (GMT-7)

Hi Michelle and welcome.

I had a herniation at c5-c6 a few years ago. I had an ACDF. Basically they go in through your throat cut away the disc that's herniated and fuse the bones using a titanium plate and screws to hold it together until the bone fuses.

After this surgery I had very little pain. I was off the pain meds within a week. I wasn't allowed back to work for 6 weeks even though I wanted to go back at 2 weeks. My surgeon just looked at me funny and said 'yeah right, see you in a month'.

Now, several years later my neck is still just fine, i can feel my fingers and my shoulder doesn't feel like it's being torn from the socket. So if the doc says you need this surgery don't panic.