OH my goodness, PAIN!

For the past 10 months, I have been experiencing pain in my right shoulder. Sometimes it would radiate down my arm and my fingers would feel all tingly. Bad enough pain to cause me to wake up several times a night. My orthopedic sent me for physical therapy which helped ease the pain after about 6 months-long after my insurance began denying me physical therapy sessions. MRI's showed I had 2 tears; in my rotator cuff and my subscap.

In July, since the pain was still present, I asked my orthopedic, "What if the pain is stemming from my neck from a car accident I had 17 years ago?" He sent me for an MRI of my c-spine. I figured I'd make an appointment to go over the results upon my return from California. Well, just when the pain in my right shoulder began to be tolerable, I came home from California with intense pain in my LEFT shoulder! This time it was a constant shooting, searing pain down my left arm into my elbow and down to my hand. I brought my MRI's to my PT (waiting a week to see the ortho was too long for me) who looked them over and showed me where my C4 through C7 were and how some of them were pushing into my spinal cord! HMMMMM....this makes sense!

The past 4 days the pain has become so awful, I find myself moaning and groaning (usually after someone brings it to my attention), and crying with pain. My PT was good enough to stay open (he had a couple of other patients that morning) and do an eval on Saturday morning--traction seemed to help and he found this great spot on my neck that when he pressed it, the pain subsided (I keep trying to find it on my own but worry I may cut off my circulation somewhere).

Tomorrow, Monday, I have an appointment with my PT (beg for heat and the lovely towel around my neck stretching me into oblivion--I feel as though I must look like one of those old-fashioned dental patients with their cheeks wrapped up) and straight from there I'm off to the ortho to seek some answers. I just know I cannot function like this! My arm feels weird and my strength is lacking-hard to lift an empty water bottle. This cannot be good.

Yesterday we had a family barbecue with Dave's family and my mom at our house. I did all the prep work--shopping, making dips, marinating chicken and skewering it on a stick (this was tricky as my left arm had a lot of difficulty holding the strips of chicken as my right hand threaded the stick through it). Running Cassie to soccer practice in the middle of it all gave me the time alone where I really began to feel the pain again. I had to get ice for blended drinks (try carrying that with an arm that feels as if it's coming off anaesthesia) which brought the tears again. I tried hanging around with family to get my mind off the pain and finally around 9:30, succumbed to my needs and went to the bedroom with the heating pad praying for relief. It finally came sporadically throughout the night. When I woke (for good) this morning, it came back with a vengeance--now I have some fun little spasms to go along with the pain.

This morning I turned to the Internet to search for answers of Cervical herniated discs and it all makes a lot of sense. I just don't like the answers.