Great article. If only I’d read it 30 years ago, I might feel better by now.

Spinal issues can be tricky, painful and difficult to diagnose and treat. When I started having trouble using my right arm and feeling pain in my back on that side, I had no clue what was going on. That was just over 30 years ago and I was very active, involved in a flag football league, a builder and cement finisher, and a power lifter. I went to see my regular General Practitioner (as is, and was, the instructed practice of most insurers) and was sent to an orthopedic surgeon. The orthopod decided I had a torn rotator cuff and treated me thusly. Obviously this did not help, but made matters worse.

The next doctor came closer, deciding I had a pinched nerve in my neck, and treating me with traction. I always felt like crap for several hours after treatment, and then I would feel great for a day or two. I decided he had the correct diagnosis — or close to it. But the treatment didn’t last. After a year or so, I tried a Chiropractor (a friend’s brother). He took x-rays, gave me a general stretching and check-up and made a follow-up appointment.

I got a call a few days later saying that he wanted to take a new set of x-rays, no charge, and if they looked the same he wanted to send them to his professors at Palmer Chiropractic College for a second opinion. He, or they rather, saw the problem. I had severely fractured two cerebral vertebrae in my younger days, probably high school football, and it had not healed properly. It is a similar injury to what Peyton Manning has had, but in his case they identified and treated very quickly and he was back on the field not too long thereafter. In my case, it had been 30 years. He told me he could NOT help me and I should try a MD.

I tried several more doctors over the next several years and I even begged a few to look at the x-rays I had gotten from an honest chiropractor and/or to take an MRI. Nothing doing. Finally, I found a doctor in 2010 who took an interest in my symptoms. By then, I had completely lost the use of my upper right arm and my right hand was starting to twitch and shake just a bit. Being right handed, I was becoming desperate for help. The pain in my upper right back was so severe from using those muscles to try to operate my failed arm that I was pretty much incapacitated.

After having spinal surgery on the C-4, 5, 6 and getting half a dozen epidurals when that didn’t work, going through physical therapy for 16 weeks and am now still looking at two brown bottles, one of muscle relaxers and one of painkillers. Now these aren’t just for the neck; after the surgery, the pain began extending farther down my back and the good doctors told me that the new spine was fine, but the part below it had become soft. I now have arthritis of the spine and have difficulty standing and walking.

So, as you find new ways to treat spinal conditions, please keep writing. I promise I’ll keep reading.