Chronic Pain for over a decade and I'm only 24

[thehobophobicbum]

I am a 24 year old male who has had chronic neck pain since 7th grade and  chronic pain in my entire upper back and left shoulder blade for the last 5 years or so.  After a 2nd MRI 2 years ago, I was told that I had a herniated disc in c5-c6 with c6 left nerve root impingement and spinal stenosis in c5-c6 area. There is also a reversal of the lordotic curve.  Until recently, I had sharp pains down my left arm to my fingers.  Although I'm not certain, I believe the pain is cause more with the 'what feels like painstaking steel ball' muscle knots all over my upper back and more painful primarily in the Trapezius muscle area.

I have been to so many doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, etc. for so long and it has only became exponentially worse.  

Please help!

[Kalvin]

Tell the Doctors your thoughts, trigger points are a perfectly logical possibility. The injections also have a diagnostic value in the sense that, if they don't help, you can cross off trigger points as a cause of your pain.

Take Care

[thehobophobicbum]

I have had had trigger point injection once, a steroid epidural twice and facet joint injections once.  For all of these procedures, none had either any or long lasting effects.  

What I don't understand is that no one has tried to really target these areas of pain.  After researching through all hours of the night, I felt that trigger points really described the pain that I am in perfectly.  Unfortunately, this is a new medical topic and there are those that don't even believe it's a real thing.  Super frustrating.

[Kalvin]

What your going through is fairly typical for a C6 radiculopathy. Sounds like you've tried most of the conservative treatments, have you tried injections? In a lot of cases, if the pain lasts longer than 6 to 12 weeks, or if the pain and disability is severe, spine surgery may be a reasonable option. Single level  discectomies and fusions have a pretty good success rates.

Although, there are a couple things you need to keep in mind. First of all these surgeries are great for providing relief of arm pain and the stabbing pain you get with radiculopathy. The success rates in this regard are about 95 to 98%. However its not particularly effective in getting rid of the knots you describe in your upper back.Once the pressure is taken off the nerve root, You should be able to work those out in PT. But there's no guarantee. Upper back pain is very common with cervical spine disorders. I have it myself.

The next thing is your age, with these procedures there is also the risk of Adjacent segment disease. Having surgery at C5-6 can put more pressure on the levels above and below.  In other words, you could have a single level fusion or ADR and you could be pain free and everything could be great for about 5 or 10 years or even 20 but there's always the chance that something could go wrong.

These are some numbers from a study that was done, and in my opinion they are VERY conservative. The disease-free survival rates were 89% at 5 years, 84% at 10 years and 67% at 17years. As you can see the longer the time, the greater the risk and your so young that just makes the risk even higher. And then again, you might be fine. Its a lot to think about. Do some research.

Take Care