The Culprit Revealed!

As many of you know to exhaustive detail, about 2 months ago I went through a lot of ouchy time with my neck and shoulder. I went to a chiro for about a month, and was wasn’t making a lot of progress. So I went to see my doctor. My doctor, being the wise and all knowing kinda chap he is, said “I’m not going to screw around, we’re getting you an MRI”. After a couple of weeks, my insurance company finally approved it, and last week I went into the little bangy tunnel.

Today the office called me to let me know I have a bulging C5-C6 Disc. From teh intertubes:

“Symptoms of cervical disc disease include neck and arm pain, which may radiate down into the hand. This pain may be associated with numbness and tingling over the arm and hand, which may feel like it is “asleep”. Additionally, weakness of the hand and arm muscles may develop.”

Beside the tingling and numbness, this is pretty much me to the tee. While most of the pain is gone now, there’s some lingering muscle pain, and my right arm is pronouncedly weaker than my left, even after a month.

Next Thursday I head in for a follow up and discussion of treatment and physical therapy. I have no idea what this might mean for my martial arts training, but chances are, it’s not great news. I won’t speculate too much before hearing the exact details, but I imagine there will be some restrictions to prevent further damage.

To be clear, it’s not certain that martial arts caused it in the first place. In reading around, it looks like this stuff can happen in your sleep, which is when I first noticed it.

For the record:

Chiro – did x-rays, told me I had bad posture, had no idea what was causing terrible shoulder and arm pain, simply continued adjustments.

ER Doc – listened to symptoms for 2 minutes, diagnosed jacked up trapezius muscle.

My doc – didn’t screw around guessing, ordered an MRI to see what the hell is going on.

Good times. Anyway, like I said, it’s not hurting too much these days, so I’m not terribly concerned going forward. Might start to be a bother when I get older, but medicine is advancing at a fair clip, so who knows.

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