2 years of recurrent cervical herniations

Two years ago, I fell down a flight of stairs and herniated three disks in my cervical spine and was treated very very conservatively. When I arrived at the doctor's office, he said if I would have arrived perhaps 24 hrs later I would have been paralyzed or worse. I injured my shoulder from the fall and had to do much physical therapy because it wings out because it flares up occasionally. I continued to have limited mobility in my neck with stiffness and occasional pain and also the tingling in my shoulder down to my fingers never did fully subside. Is it possible that the injury to my neck was bad enough that it never fully healed because recently my husband and I were in the car and he had to slam on the breaks, and my neck got whipped forward. I didn't even get my neck whipped forward that hard but I can't seem to stand getting my neck whipped around at all since my injury two years ago. So after going from doctor to doctor, the current doctor now is suggesting epidural injections. I understand that that may relieve my pain, however in the long run, will I still be so vulnerable to future injury from such small incidents? This is the last resort before being referred to a surgeon to fix my problem because after so long I have a lot of weakness in my dominant arm/shoulder and I guess my question is, would I be better off getting the epidural and ALSO being referred to someone to operate? I haven't been able to do any of the things I loved doing such as snowboarding, skiing, waterskiing, etc because of this for so long and I just don't want to set myself up for more future problems.

[Kalvin]

Yes it is very possible that your herniations have not healed, sometimes they will reabsorb and get smaller over time, and other times they won't.

The thing you have to understand about neck surgery is in many instances,  there are no guaranties it'll help. In situations where the herniation is compressing a nerve and this has been confirmed by MRI the procedures are pretty successful, but surgery should only be used as a last resort. That's why Doctors generally like to try everything else first.

Definitely try the epidurals, if you're like me, any amount of pain relief would be a God sent. You haven't mentioned P.T. in cases where the spinal cord is being compressed, it can be dangerous,but in other cases gentle stretching can be very helpful for neck pain.


Take Care