Nerve damge to upper neck region

[tonyfromnj780]

My question is my girl friend was in a car accident two years ago. A van side swipped her mini-van and cause some severe neck damage.  This damage cause constant pain in her neck, migrains, and some numbness.  The treatment they prescribed was getting cold injections to the nerves in neck and head.  She received three treatments over the past  year with some short term relief of pain but always come back.  Beside this  treatment she been doing a routine of physiotherapy, deep tisse massage, water therapy with some relief but not enough.  She is going to start acupunture soon.  My question is besides surgery to burn the nerves (which mostly grow back and pain is worse) is there any other treatments that she can try to find relief.  She is on multiple pills for the pain and to help her sleep, she also on anti-depressants due to the constant pain and lack of sleep.

Her goal is to manage the pain where she can be fully funtionable and to eliminate her pain and sleeping pills.  Please any suggestion would be so helpful.

Tony

[Ashelen]

sorry I meant to say that "neck nerves do not heal, and sometimes when they regenerate the pain regenerates with them...something about the proximity to the cerebellum and "nerve memory""? someone else might have better insight into that, I'm not sure what my neuro was telling me with that.

[Ashelen]

Hi Tony,
What a wonderful friend to come on here and try to help your hurting friend...that's just amazing support and it helps more than you possibly can imagine, I'm willing to bet!

I have a bit of nerve damage in my neck from an allergic neurological reaction to a medicine about a year and a half ago that caused the nerve clusters in the base of my neck and all along the left side of my neck near my spine to suffer degenerating damage (basically they were crushed and twisted during the incident and my they're slowly getting worse because of ongoing spasms).....so I feel your friend's pain :(. Unfortunately for me, they are the least of the pain that I'm in so I haven't explored a whole lot with any of the nerve-pain techniques aside from accupuncture and accupressure therapy.

Unfortunately for nerve pain there are limited options. There are a lot of people on here that may have some more advice than I do, but in MY experience (from what my neurologist and GP have told me)....your options are really limited to a few things; accupuncture (works for some people, didn't for me and obviously didn't do enough for her), managing the pain with medicines (there are specific meds targeting nerve pain, has your friend explored these at all?...and sometimes muscle relaxers can actually help nerve pain because the pain can be a result of a musle spasm squeezing a nerve cluster...you said she was on meds, but what sorts?)...and for extreme nerve pain, there is a procedure wherein they essentially inject Botox into the nerve clusters and it deadens sensation. the effects are temporary (I think it lasts 2 months on average, but I'm not sure I don't remember what my neuro said) and doctors seem to be hesitant to use this, but I was offered this and it seems like a promising technique. some people with severe nerve damage and pain actually opt to have the offending nerve clusters severed, but this is a desperate end-of-options method that causes muscular sagging (small price to pay for some people) and inability to respond with the connected muscles.


like I said, I don't know all the options because my condition is fairly new to me and it sounds like nowhere near as bad as your friend, the poor dear! but I do know that nerve pain is tricky and especially nerve damage..my neurologist has told me that short of severing the clusters, I will be facing this pain the rest of my life because neck nerves do not regenerate and therefore are unlikely to get better and nerve damage is almost always degenerative (gets worse over time). most chronic pain sufferers do NOT like having to take medication, like your friend, and it's a horrible fact of life that she may never be able to get away from pain medication without drastic measures....but here's hoping. I would recommend asking about the Botox injections!


oh I'm sorry I just read your second reply..obviously she knows about burning/severing the nerve cluster as an option..but I understand not wanting to do it. I'm trying to re-read my reply to make sure that it makes sense but I've got such a bad headache right now that I'm going to give up on trying to be coherent and hope that I made some sense.

Again, I just want to say how amazing it is that your friend has someone like you to support and help her...that's worth more than a strong pain pill any day!

[tonyfromnj780]

She had an MRI done, and she does not have bulging discs so that is good news for her.   She has been seeing a therapists to cope, but the problem with that is that they keep prescribing medication.  Which in the short run helps but ultimately she wants to rely less on medications and more of a treatment that reduce or eliminates pain.   There must be something other then buring the nerve endings as a alternative.  

[Jaybay]

Has your friend had an MRI done in the past 6 months?  It's entirely possible that one or more cervical discs have been slowly bulging since the accident.  It's not at all uncommon for a person with neck trauma to feel no symptoms for several months and suddenly experience symptoms.  It may be time to ask for another MRI to see what, if any, changes have occurred since the last one.  Your friend may need a surgical repair rather than continued pain management, and an updated MRI series is one way to make that determination.

Psychotherapy with a pain psychologist is another thing to investigate.  Chronic pain does a real number on us mentally, and it's nothing short of foolish to ignore that fact.  We all have to learn ways to cope with the pain and the changes it makes in our lives, and a good therapist can help in that regard.  Look at therapy as just one more wrench in the pain toolbox rather than something shameful.  No, therapy won't cure the pain, but it sure does help to make life worth living again.  :-)