Who wouldn't want to know more about a disease they have that could eventually leave them crippled?! I know I sure do but none of these doctors would show me what they were seeing and when you have an internal disease, its very hard to research it as you don't know how bad you really are, if you are.
So here I am, sitting in the office staring at my x-rays and even me who doesn't know anything, knew something wasn't right with my neck.
When my chiropractor entered the room, he was like, ok, here you are(as he brings me to the x-rays.) Let's go through this together and I'll show you what I'm seeing. Thank you Arnold.
He started drawing lines on my x-rays. Showing me that I wasn't properly balanced and that my spine is definitely out of line. My whole body is leaning to the right side (first x-ray on the left side.) Onto the next x-ray which also shows that the top of my spine by the base of my skull is also not in line with the rest of my body(x-ray on right side, mouth open.) Now onto my neck, which is the middle x-ray, the one that shows everything. I have severe damage to my vertebrae from C5 through C7. Now, this I did know but I hadn't seen the damage. Arnold explained to me that because my discs are deteriorating, my vertebrae now have the ability to "bottom out". Which means they can now touch each other if I'm doing something that allows them too. So this means something along the lines of trotting a horse(which I love to do and have spent many a mile in the saddle doing this) or driving on a rough road that makes it so that my head is bouncing or if I were to play on a trampoline type deal. Any kind of bouncing could affect my disc and my vertebrae. My vertebrae have been touching one another (naughty little things) as they have hooks in the end of them. This is quite disturbing to me. I have decades left to live and I'm not in good standings as to where I should be. This is quite scary for me, having all these years left to live and possibly be crippled or ending up with a hunch back!
So Arnold is going to try and fix me. He can not repair the damage to my discs or my vertebrae but he is going to try and get the curve back in my neck and help my poor C1 and C2 vertebrae out as they're carrying the weight of my head!! (causing a lot of head aches and a lot of tension headaches because my whole neck is supposed to carry the weight not just 2 of them) so this to me, is good news. It's something for me to strive for and become healthy again.
He said, your weight, your headaches, your sleeping patterns will get better when your spine is aligned. Until than, you just have to live life the best you can. I also mentioned to him that the doctors and physiotherapists were starting to think that I had fibromyalgia. He seems to think that this is false and that all the symptomatic pains I've been getting are because of my pinched nerves and painful discs/vertebrae in my neck and with treatment, these will start to diminish. Good news eh?!
Now, why didn't I go to the chiropractor sooner? Well for one, with my insurance, I had to stick to what my doctor said. Plus, I'm stubborn thinking that I was doing ok and WRONG, I wasn't doing ok. I wasn't getting better. So now, I have a long long long road a head of me but I want to be healthy, I want to be good again and I want to live a long life with Jordan. I do not want to be crippled and I do not want to live in this kind of pain. And speaking of pain, he also confirmed that I am not a wuss, that the condition of my neck is extremely painful and that because of my high tolerances, I probably wouldn't have noticed how bad I was until it was really too late.
So here I am, two years in the making, I finally know the proper diagnoses of my disease. It wasn't my doctor, it wasn't the x-ray technician nor the orthopaedic surgeon or the neurologist. I also didn't take up the offer of the physatrist to stick a needle in my neck to x-ray my neck and determine what nerves to kill. It was my chiropractor who took the diagnoses that I received and showed me what it was that I was dealing with. He offered to HELP me. He didn't offer pain killers or something to numb my brain. He's going to help me and make me feel better. Two years of suffering, not to mention all the years I've been suffering with migraines. The pain in my neck and how tense I felt all the time. The amount of tears I shed when one day I couldn't get on a horse by myself because I had lost all the strength in my arms. This pain and the emotional breakdowns I felt from losing the ability to do things was all because chiropractic treatments do not roll off of doctors tongues.
So there it is. I also took a picture of my x-rays but the board wasn't lit up so it is difficult to see but you can get the gist.
Have a good Monday everyone!
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