Welcome back! 🤗 I am sad you went through so much, but I'm so glad you're feeling better. Sending you lots of hugs and good vibes your way! Blessings! ❤
So great to see you back and feeling better Angela! You were missed; sounds like a lot was going on in your world. I hate that you had to go through all that. Your scar is barely there and it will heal over time.
Thanks so much Raymond and Melanie.... I hate that I had to go through that too! Hoping and praying that this time next year it will be a distant memory. Happy New Year to you both. xo
Hi Donna .... thank you so much ... I'm told it can take as much as a year to entirely heal. Its a Marathon. Blessings to you. Thank for your kind words. xo
It took me at least a year to feel better honestly - I’m assuming you had fusion or something - my c5-7 is fused and the first time C 5-6 did not fuse, so they had to go in through the back to add rods the second time, because I was still having symptoms over two years later and that helped but going through the back is so much worse! And this isn’t even doing anything about the upper cervical vertebrae that are still bothering me. 😢 so glad you are doing better. It’s amazing what they can do these days.
Hi Paula ... oh my ...you had to have TWO surgeries? So the first time they went in through the front? I had 4-5 fused. During the day I am okay, BUT it takes me about 2 hours from the time I rise to feel "almost" normal" I still have the pain which is pretty bad from the moment I hit my pillow to the time I rise. Sometimes it's bad enough to warrant pain meds. Mostly I take Tylenol but so badly want to get off all pills. May I ask, did the 2nd surgery get you out of pain. God bless you Paula. Thanks for commenting. 🙏🙏🙏
@@onewithgreyhair yes first time I got a plate through the front and that one wasn’t too bad but it wasn’t stabilizing enough for the upper one. When they go through the back they said it’s the worst one they do, regarding post surgical pain. When I would get up and try to get around for showers and such I only lasted a few minutes before the nerve pain kicked in like a blow torch on the back of my neck. They finally gave me gabapentin for that for a couple weeks which helped take the edge off. Take the pain meds if you need to. At least to sleep. There is also some research now that suggests Tylenol isn’t that effective but I don’t know. I use Celebrex and really can’t get by without it for very long even now (2nd surgery was Jan 2022)
@@onewithgreyhairas far as pain yes - helped a lot. But I was filtering out so much of it that I didn’t even realize how much I was hurting until it started to go away. A lot of my pain was really muscles that were compensating for the muscles that weren’t getting the nerve signals. So they were overworked and cramping And achy. I had finally realized that I wasn’t imagining it when I had trigger points released with dry needling, (very weird sensation!) it relieved so much of my pain, but I also then suddenly couldn’t lift my toothbrush for more than 10 seconds at a time. I would have to stop and take a break. That arm has regained a lot of strength but when you damage nerves, it can take a long time for them to repair and they may never be 100%. It is also difficult to find a doctor that actually listens to you sometimes. my first spine doctor was not very good, and I ended up going to somebody for a second opinion, he looked at the same imaging and pointed out to me why I was having so much pain on the right side. My C6-7 foramen was very narrowed. And I don’t understand why my other spine doctor couldn’t see that. So the new guy sent me to a pain specialist for an epidural steroid injection, and my insurance kept refusing so they had to argue for me for two hours on the phone before it was approved. I’m so thankful for that. It’s difficult to find a Doctor Who will put in that much time to argue with your insurance on your behalf. And when he put that steroid in there, I could tell that was the source of much of my pain because it duplicated all the pain symptoms I had been feeling for years as the pressure of that fluid was applied. But then the steroid helps over the next few weeks. However, sadly, it didn’t help for long, so that told them I really needed surgery. From what I understand you can have pain coming from the arthritis in the facet joints, and then you can have both pain and weakness, which comes from the disk issues pressing on the big spinal nerves. It’s difficult to sort them all out. but once you have arthritis in the facet joints, your options are kind of limited to fusion. They told me that if you put in a disc replacement device that preserves the natural motion, then your arthritic joints will continually hurt anyway. But of course, fusing just transfers the stress of moving to the adjacent joints. 😢
Angela!! I'm so happy to see you!! I've been thinking about you and praying for you and asking Coco if you were okay, etc I'm glad you have such a great doctor and an amazing husband. Yes, I would be happy to have you pray for me as I continue to pray for you. Love and blessings ♥️🙏
