Originally Posted by fern

"The benefit of this surgical technique manifests immediately because of the disappearance of the vascular and neurological compression produced by the anterior scalene muscles at C6-C7 and by the sternocleidomastoideo muscles at the entrance of the brain where the Atlas is situated. This has been demonstrated in patients with CTOS, Symptomatic Parkinson's, Functional Alzheimer, Early Symptomatic Parkinson's, psychological disturbances by hypoxia, Epilepsy, multiple Sclerosis, hemodynamic Parkinsonism and threat of gangrene of the upper limbs."

Tam, are you saying you have CTOS? Is this in addition to or diff from regular TOS? The surgery sounds very positive but I didn't understand the MickeyMouse & DDuck refs.

Originally Posted by tshadow

Milou, I will read your story you have posted. I look forward to getting to know you better as we progress. Also note that for some reason last night, my fiance thought it would be funny to change some of my posts just a little to make me "not to serious" as he put it...in my opinion, it was not funny at all, and I like funny pranks, but I am going to go through and fix the unfunny pranks now...(as if I had nothing better to do while in pain but to fix bad pranks. So sorry!!!

Originally Posted by fern

I've got a whole host of probs in addition to TOS including the throat clearing, hypermobility (which is now affecting various joints), cervical disc and joint disease, fibromyalsia (though not severe), shoulder blade (knifelike) pain, muscle spasms in the upper back, shoulder arm and hand pains, and a lot of head and ear stuff--fullness in the face and jaw area, pain in the jaw, pain that radiates down from the ear, very stuffy ears, extreme pain during and after flying (enough that i hardly ever fly and gave up any multiple flights per day), and plenty of tinnitus.

but for me i found i have a CSF leak that goes into my ear. i'm planning on having that repaired very soon. i was hoping the surgery would clear up many of my ear symptoms but i was told that they are likely to be unrelated. i would like to learn how the ear symptoms are related to TOS before having the surgery.

I also have gum problems. I was told that they were possibly caused from taking so much Neuronitn for so long but I realize that the nerves might be affected from the TOS. Anybody else have gum probs?

The neurologist I saw last week tried to tell me I have carpal tunnel and also elbow tunnel and shoulder probs in addition to or instead of TOS but he isn't very knowledgable about TOS. I'm afraid my list could go on if I am to include everything. I have a real propensity to develop RSIs from doing just about any activity--but I now think that that is due to the hypermobility. My recent PT told me that she believes that the hypermobility helped lead to all of my problems-from neck to TOS and all extremity probs.

Originally Posted by milou

Hi Fern
Have you seen a cardiac surgeon ?? to make sure, you do not have vascular Tos. As far as I know the ear symptoms could stem from compression of the vertebral artery.
I had lots of neurological symptoms before my surgery (and seen lots of neuros, who found nothing in spite of severe vascular tos on both sides) . I was only seen by a cardiac for the TOS. He dit not go in to the neorological things but emphasised that of cource there were nerve impingment, when there were vascular.
Sounds reasonable that hypermobility could course our problems in the first place, but not much research on that from what i have seen.