Hello,

As many often say, people who are doing well rarely come back and post on the forum. I wanted to give an update.

I had surgery with Dr. Donahue four years ago. The surgery went very well and healing went very well.

I have improved and do not consider myself done with healing so I have even more hope of improving even more.

The biggest change in reducing my symptoms was to stop any kind of computer work at a job. My job is not with computers at all. That was the biggest thing.

The second thing that helped a lot was getting in with a Physical Therapist from the Institute of Physical Art. There are few of them but they actually know how to touch you gently in order to get ribs to move down. This helped a lot but it was not enough.

Finally, surgery with a good doctor.

I am not 100% better but having done the three things above, I consider myself very lucky and on a great path.

Surgery mostly made my entire chest very numb. This is just fine with me because I have all the time in the world for healing and it is better than pain. Slowly slowly the numbness has been going away. Right now, only part of my neck and part of my chest is still numb. I feel it coming back nicely though especially in my sleep.

My nervous system has been stretching itself out a lot over the years. I feel as if I am letting go of much that had always been built up in me. This is very healthy. Very odd, but healthy.

I try to communicate what I am thinking and not keep things in. Being direct helps me not carry so much on me and it actually comes across as good. People are responding well to me when I had thought they'd 'get mad.'

I did feel like I died on the surgery table and never woke up. I am sure this feeling will pass. It is very odd to go through that, it was for the best, and it is as if my soul is an inch or so at odds with my body. Interesting stuff. It is probably my nervous system not understanding how big it actually is. I feel as if my nerves have always been constricted.

Anyways, I wanted people to know there are positive things out there and people out there who had different things work for them. There are no easy answers I am afraid. You can only make choices based on all the available facts.

I have NTOS by the way which is the hardest one to figure out.

Thank you,
Mark