NeuroTalk Support Groups - Hi All- My story

Well I should first start with the present. I am a 33 y.o male on disability laying in bed on a beautiful Saturday afternoon while recuperating from a reconstructive foot surgery (maybe related, just don’t know yet).

I cannot believe it’s 2019, so much has changed for me in the past 6 or so years and a lot of it not good. Loss of multiple very close family members and an escalation in the spinal damage I started out having in 2012. I was doing well, had a good job, a fiancé, and then my neck started to hurt and increased like that until I saw my dr who notified me that I had two herniated discs in the cervical spine (c4/5 and c 6/7 with c 5/6 ok) with one good disc in between them. So we decided on fusing the disc they thought was the worst. Had that surgery and it didn’t alleviate anything at all. Mind you this was a top neurosurgeon in Chicago which makes it all so surreal. So surgery #1 didn’t work, ok onto surgery #2 which fused all three together. Started to feel better but this was about the time where they gave me an emg which really showed some damage. About say four months into surgery #2 everything was really starting to deteriorate and they didn’t know what was going on and neither did I. As a recommendation from my pcp I saw a separate spinal surgeon to see what was up. One x-ray later showed my neck to be in shambles. Multiple cracked vertebrae that we later found out that in surgery #2, the dr took out the hardware from surgery #1 too soon which then allowed my neck to crumble disc by disc. Thankfully I got that fixed with surgery #3, and then added in two more minor surgeries for a spinal cord stimulator (1 got infected and that’s a whole different story.) All of that was between 2012-2015. I haven’t had any surgeries since though the C 3/4 is starting to show signs of going bad. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I’ve been bouncing around pain clinics to find the right match to the one I’m at now which I do like. My peripheral neuropathy has worsened from the feet to now where it’s at my upper thigh/hip, can’t do much because of it, had to deal with three losses in our household- my dad, aunt and uncle, three very close and dear heroes of mine, and am on copious amounts of medication OxyContin 40 mgs cr, oxycodone 20 mgs, zanaflex for the spasms in my leg. I’m actually very concerned about what this could turn into because I know it’s not just going to stay this way forever.