If you follow my log you may remember me mentioning I thought I had a nerve impingement in my back during my training for the XPC Finals....turns out it was more than that.
Sometime between weeks 8 and 10 I started getting burning pain around my right shoulder blade whenever I squatted. I didn't think much about it since it had happened before and gone away. However, that wasn't the case this time and it got progressively worse as the weight got heavier. I began seeing my chiropractor and massage therapist to see if I could get some relief and I did a little, but not as much as I expected. Around week 6 when I began putting my bench shirt on I noticed my right arm from the elbow down was numb, or felt asleep down the outside of it. I could still feel everything enough to bench and so on, but couldn't feel that an ant had latched on to me around my elbow until he decided to change locations. This made me a little concerned and I knew there had to be something wrong with my neck (yes, I have a neck). I figured I'd get it checked out after the meet: it's only 6 weeks out anyhow. So I finished training, did the meet, had a good day and just went on about business.
After taking a week off from the gym I started back up slowly only doing one or two movements and then heading out. The first week was great and everything felt okay. Right arm was still a little numb and the pinched nerve feeling was nearly gone too. The second week was going fine too, until I got home from the gym on Thursday the 23rd, laid on the floor and felt like my neck and upper back were on fire. I'm not sure how many of you have had a "stinger" from playing football or wrestling, but that's what it felt like and it was a constant pain for about an hour. No matter which position I laid in or sat in the pain wouldn't subside. Once it did I was about to move about, but looking up or raising my right arm would set it off again so I took some pain killer sand hoped for the best. That night I couldn't lay in bed without searing pain so finally had to move to the couch to prop myself up and get some sleep. The next morning the pain hadn't subsided, but gotten worse and had now moved down my arm, under my armpit and around into my right pec. I ended up having to go to a walk in orthopedic clinic to get checked out. They did an x-ray like always and you could see the disc height diminish as you moved down to C5 to T2 so the doctor figured I had a protrusion somewhere in that are and sent me to get an MRI and gave me some flexeril and prednisone to see if it would help, but it didn't. I had to rely on the pain killers I had at home to get me through the weekend and still ended up on the couch to try and sleep for a couple of hours at a time.
So Monday comes around and I get the report from my doctor and it was about what I expected. I have a lot of bone spurs from C5 on down, Nerve impingement at C6-C7, stenoses from C5 to T2 and a 3-4mm protrusion at T1-T2 along with severe biforaminal stenosis. Lots of shit going on. I saw another doctor yesterday to go over the MRI and report with him and talked about treatment. Basically that involves getting shots to help with the pain. He gave me a cortisone shot before I left to see if it would help and discussed having a deeper shot should this one not work. Thankfully it worked well enough for me to be able to sleep in my bed after 5 days on the couch, watch tv with the wife without having to shift or lay down every 5 minutes from pain and reach over my head. The pain is still there, but now it's around a 4 or 5 rather than 8 or 9 out of 10.
I'm planning on seeing my neurosurgeon that did my lower back surgery, Dr. Chris Baker, to get his opinion on it and what he believes the treatment options are. He did a tremendous job on my lower back so I trust him to be honest with me on this too.
Until then I'll be taking a couple of weeks off as prescribed by my wife and hope to have more info soon. I'll be sure to share it as soon as I can.