Originally Posted by cali4nia

I have heard that you can help a bulging disc or herniated disc with pt or chiro. But at what point would you give up? I mean there must be a "give up" point...for lack of a better term. How long does a Dr let it go before they decide "OK, enough is enough, this is obviously not going to fix itself".

Anyone experience this or have or are currently going through this? I have been going to chiro 3-5 times a week for 8 1/2 months and not a bit better, some days worse actually! I did pt at the beginning but stopped because it made my pain worse too!

Any advice?

Originally Posted by cali4nia

Hi all, wow this seems like the kinda' place that can really help me deal with how I am feeling. Seems like a lot of support around here! xo

I'm a 37 yr old mom and for the past 20 years I have suffered from periodic neck pain. Every now and then it would seize up and I couldn't move for about a week then I would slowly start to feel better and then I would carry on like normal till the next seize up. I would go to physio, chiro and massage and it would get me back on track till the next episode. On July 3rd my third son was born, 5 weeks later on a Friday night he had a life threatening episode where he stopped breathing and after a frantic 911 call and several tests by noon the next day the Dr came and sat down in our hospital room and told us that our baby was having seizures and that we would be medi-vac'd to Vancouver children's hospital the next morning (a whole other story, but he 's home and doing great now with a diagnosis of nothing other than epilepsy!) So that day the Dr. came into my room and had the "talk" with me, during that talk, my neck seized again and this time it was excruciating and landed me downstairs in the ER getting some pain control. This was on August 15th, 2012 and I'm still waiting for this seize up to go away! 5 days ago I had a CT and this was my result:

C4-C5:small posterior disc protrusion w/o central canal stenosis
C5-C6:mild right posterior lateral disc osteophyte complex formation and a small posterior disc herniation, resulting in minimal central canal stenosis and effacement of the right lateral recess.
C6-C7:tiny posterior central disc protrusion and minimal posterior disc osteophyte complex formation with minimal central canal stenosis.
C7-T1:minimal posterior disc osteophyte complex formation without significant central canal stenosis.

I'm still waiting to see a specialist to go over these results, I've seen my family Dr and he said I most likely need surgery. They seem fairly mild, minimal, tiny etc...why am I in soooo much pain? I can't turn my head to the left AT ALL, I have harsh burning sensation all down the left side of my back into my hip, all down my left arm, in my shoulder and up the side of my neck into my jaw. At times I'm unstable on my feet, almost clumsy feeling, and suffering from incontinence (apparently from child birth?) and always a sensation of feeling like I'm getting the flu (if that makes any sense). Anyways I guess I'm just wondering if anyone can give me some info on my results? Are they what's causing my pain if they are so minimal?

Thanks for reading...Happy Sunday to all!!

Originally Posted by cali4nia

So my MRI is tomorrow at 3:30 pm, hopefully I will have results within the week sometime. I will post the them when I get them. I have also looked into a private clinic to get a second opinion. It's just been so long, I mean if Chiro or PT was going to work I should have seen results by now don't ya' think? It's been 9 months...

Originally Posted by Jo*mar

Here is an earlier post with symptoms.