A long and winding road
For those that know me this might give you a little insight into whats been going with me lately.
About 9 years I hurt my back, then 5 years ago I hurt it again but this time it was much worse. After 3 years of the condition worsening I was unable to work. This depleted my somewhat rosy financial outlook, quickly. Over the past 15 months, a dozen doctors, and a variety of exams I was finally given a complete diagnosis on Monday. The doc went over the MRI with me and gave me a copy, it consists of over 148 images from virtually ever angle possible.
The one I show here is the best angle, I will go one by one.
1.This is a perfect disc and vertebrae, note the narrow oval shape that has defined endings on each side. This means the disc is cushioning the vertebrae well and is in great shape. This is what will be our guide to how a disc should look.
2. This one is in good shape too but you see the dark lines above aren’t as uniform and on the left side you see darkness. That is the disc which is essentially leaking out due to pressure. The darkness is spreading both up and down.
3.The oval shape is gone and it doesn’t come to an end on the left that it does on the right. The black line in the middle is degeneration, and once again the disc is leaking (Blown out).
4. The dark spot above the disc is also degeneration but this is in the vertebrae and that is causing imbalance and pressure on the spine as a whole. Compare 1, 2, and 3 and see how smooth of an arc the spine makes on the right as it runs down the spine, fairly smooth and uniform. Compare that to 4, 5, 6, and 7 and you start to see how jagged and out of line they get. This issue causes muscles, nerves and ligaments to pull on the spine to get it in balance but it fails causing spasms and tightness.
5. This disc is blown out on both sides as indicated by the darkness and the white shading indicates arthritis. The arc shape is now virtually a square.
6. The jagged shape of the top of the disc shows massive degeneration and the darkness on the left shows it not only herniated but is putting extreme pressure on the nerves. the dark spot right underneath shows the severe degeneration of the vertebrae.
7. This is the one of the worst discs the doctor has seen. The white shading all above and below is the worst form of arthritis and the disc has been virtually squeezed into oblivion. This has caused the huge bulges on each side and the most defined black spots. The disc is so jagged and un-uniform it hardly even resembles what figure 1 does.
8. This one actually is the best looking structure since figure 2 but still has the blackness inside and its completely blown out on the left. However the vertebrae above it looks like it is being squeezed in a vise.
9 & 10. They both are virtually the same, the faint black lines indicate where a disc should be but doesn’t, this is bone on bone rubbing against each other with virtually no cushion.
So in summary, two partially herniated discs (2&3), four herniated discs (5-6-7-8), severe disc degeneration in 3 discs (6-7-4) and arthritis in four vertebrae (7-8-9-10). Pinched nerves in three locations between 5-6-7. All these issues cause the ligaments and muscles to pull very hard to try and straighten the spine which causes many spasms in multiple areas and tightness muscles up and down the spine.
The head on view here shows how out of line the actually spine is, this is everything trying to compensate for the issues which in turn causes more.
Now to the bottom line, the only thing than can be corrected is the herniated discs but with the large amount of them and the other conditions no one will perform this operation. The degeneration will worsen and could spread, the arthritis will worsen considerably and for both of these there is no treatment. They consist of , severe arthritis, and multiple herniated discs. None of these conditions are treatable and will only worsen and become more painful (if that’s possible) the older I get. These conditions induce pinched nerves, muscle spasms and the curvature of my spine. I am only 35.