Last night, I was surfing the web for information and stumbled across this site. I was so engrossed with the stories and experiences, I hadn't realized four hours had flitted by.

I'm not much of a "support group" type person, but I thought this may be a good one to participate. So I bookmarked the page before going to bed and registered this afternoon.

I suppose I should tell the story on how I came to be here. Well, about three years ago I was starting to get neck pains. Then the sensations of my vertebrae "cracking" began to occur. Followed by a gradually increasing pain in my right elbow and cramping toes.

I made an appointment with my family doctor and he ordered an Xray of my neck. When he told me the results were disk degeneration, I freaked out until I got home and did an internet search only to realize disk degeneration was a scary term for arthritis. Pffft. No biggy, I thought.

As time progressed, the symptoms I had became more pronounced and new symptoms began popping up. Little by little, I was losing strength in my arms, my feet were freezing cold constantly. Weight loss, etc.

But what really got me worried was in November of 2011, a goofy broad (God bless her now) rear ending me in my car while she was texting and driving. The accident really made my neck hurt. So I made another appointment with my doctor, whom then referred me to a physical doctor. He ran some EMG tests that showed I in fact had some nerve damage somewhere. He wanted to schedule an MRI, but my insurance company wouldn't approve one until I did 30 days of physical therapy first (thinking all this time it was arthritis).

So I did the pt, which actually felt pretty good. They strapped my head in this machine which stretched my neck.

On December 27th, after the 30 days of pt were done, I went for the MRI. The next day, the 28th, I went back to the doc's to get the results. As soon as I walked in and signed the sign-in sheet, I was rushed back to the office. Dr. F came in and immediately started hammering me with questions such as bowel and bladder functions, balance, walking, etc. I said I was fine with everything until he asked about headaches. I was getting some ***-kicking whoppers about this time.

He then showed me the MRI. It turned out I had an intramedullary spinal cord tumor going from C5 to C7. The spinal fluid was backed up on both ends which were causing the headaches and lower back pain. All I could say was "Oh, ****." Well from that day on, it became a flurry of activity with visits to the neurosurgeons, tests, making preparations for the "what ifs", etc.

I'm just now realizing I'm writing a book. My apologies to the members here. I'll stop here and if anyone has a question, I'll be happy to answer them as briefly as possible