Well I just read my cat scan results about two seconds ago, and not that I'm all that shocked, but my doctor wants to schedule surgery as soon as possible for me.  I'm bummed, because I've been avoiding it for a long time but now I have a nerve that's getting pinched, and pressure close to my spinal cord causing numbness and it kinda sucks.  Ever have a leg or arm fall asleep really hard?  You know how much that hurts when it starts to "wake up?"  That's what I go through a few times a day sometimes with my arm, and there isn't anything they can do about it without taking a little piece off near my cervicle area.  Pretty simple proceedure with a projected recovery of only a few days, but there are some risks since it's near my spinal cord and I think I might have to kick down about a grand as well. 

 

It's been kind of an on and off thing, but getting worse lately.  Stupid accidents, landing on my head, etc.  Now I have this growing bone spur that's causing me lots of discomfort, so I think I'm going to schedule the surgery for late April when the snows pretty much gone and the waves are too wind blown to be good very much.  Anyone else ever have back/neck surgery? 

Sounds like you have sciatica I guess???  I had sever sciatica in my left leg (numbness combined with intense pain at times) due to a herniated disc.  Before you make your decision, I would go to rebuildyourback.com.  This website changed my life.  You can read more about my situation in the "herniated disc" thread... but definitely go to that site and take it very seriously because it seems to have about a 100% success rate for people who really do it.  Good luck!

Posted by riderspro
Sounds like a drag man. Not that it is my spine ont he line, but I vote sac up and do it now so you can be top notch for the meet

 

I would if I could afford the time off, etc, and it's only REALLY bad when I stress it out.  For instance, I never do military press type lifts at the gym anymore, my trainer showed me some other good shoulder lifts, but any time I try to lift straight up over my head, I'll aggrevate the area.  It will feel like somebody shoved an ice pick right in the middle of my back between my shoulder blades, and it stays like that for days.  Pretty lame actually. 

 

Thanks to the poster of the web site, I'll check that out.  All in all, it's a pretty simple fix, and other than that I'm in great shape, so I'm stoked for that.  All my vitals are really good, low cholesterol and all my other blood screen stuff was well in the good range.  I'll be good for February, just gotta keep hiking to boost my cardio.

Thanks man, that's nice.  It's been a long time coming, I've seriously beat the snot out of my cervicle and thoractic areas of my back.  Started in college with a couple of really bad car accidents, but amazingly I didn't really notice it then.  I noticed about 7 years ago that it was becoming easier to injur my back and more difficult to keep in shape without doing any harm.  Then I started feeling more pain when I got worked while surfing or boogie boarding, like when the bottom of my feet touches the back of my head.  Then the falls in the pipe where I land directly on my head, etc.  After all that and so much time I started to have them do lots of different Xrays and scans and they determined I was kinda worked.  The worst of it is the degenerative arthritis which nothing will take care of, so I just need to keep the yoga and the stretches working and keep that area strong.

Lame problem, that is a pain (literally) to deal with.  I think riderspro is right, do it sooner than later.  I know you said you can't afford to take the time off, but can you really afford to wait?

 

Also, for fuck's sake.  Stay out of the terrain park and pipe!  They are fun but geeze do they wreck you.  I haven't really played in either in about 3 years.  I was just getting too beat up, and I would rather ride sweet pow.  It's much easier on you to launch a 20ft cliff and eat it in the pow than to launch a 20ft table (or bigger)top and eat shit on the landing.  One of those tends to flop you around and leave you sayin' "wha happened?".  The other tends to flop you around leaving you sayin' "OW, What happened? Ow, I need a medic!  OW!!!"

 

Take care of it man.  Hoping you get it taken care of.

Ha ha, I know, plus you try to look worthy in front of the little 14 year old shreds that are made of rubber.  My worst and most common wreck is to catch an edge coming back inside the pipe and fold myself in half on the flats.  The pro's make it look so easy don't they?  Also little spinouts coming in from airing a table, you know how you get all the speed and have that one squirrely second when you land and make a little carve to get control.  Miss one of those and catch and edge and the whiplash is rough, but that's not so much of a park thing, those types of hits are all over and they look so tempting! 

 

Thanks for all the comments though, that's nice.  They also said they have to go in right through my tat, doesn't that suck?  Anyway, I'll kinda play it by ear, but no way I'll get this surgery before April, I'm just all weirded out by it and it's not THAT crucial, I'm functioning fine for the most part.  It's funny when I had surgery as a kid I never tripped out, and now I just get a weird feeling about it. 

Thanks.  I've put a lot of thought into it and it's really a simple proceedure, it just trips me out that they acutally made the statement "there's a bit of risk since we're cutting so close to your spinal cord", but it really doesn't mean anything, I don't even know why they said it and tripped me out.  I really can't fix my problem any other way, it's just this little invasive piece of bone growth that's causing the major problems.  As far as the arthritis, that's not gonna go away, but at least it doesn't hit me so hard that I have to breathe all shallow and all that.  I think I already said it, but for some reason lifting over my head is what really gets me, and I have to be super careful.  For some unknown reason, I lifted an office chair over the cubicle walls for a co-worker the other day because it was the only way out.  Right away I felt the little "pre-click" and tried to move all nible to stop the "official click" from happening, but no dice.  It's really painful when that happens, and takes about 10 days to mellow out, and I have muscle spasms that go along with it.   Once this is done, I'll be able to deal with the other stuff, it's just the really stabbing pain and numbness that gets me all stressed out.  Morphine and work, not a good idea.

You may want to check this http://www.iddtherapy.com/ENGLISH/What_is_IDD.html  before getting the surgery.  Good luck

 

Jose " El maracucho"

I just got back from my physical therapy appointment.  They have a rack that you can hang from, that thing is amazing.  The second I'm hanging there like a bat, I get immediate relief, it's such a strange feeling to completely reverse the stress on my back, and kind of feel everything stretch and separate.  Those people at PT are hardcore though, they really work ya.  Today my goal was increased mobility in the cervicle area.  For instance, if I try to touch my chin to my chest, TOTAL pain, so they were working on that, pretty kewl what they were able to accomplish in an hour.  Although I do Yoga, I don't really push it, and they are big on getting results through pushing "just a little more" to get results.  Amazing I must say, though I'm feelin' it and I'm sure I'll need to ice down when I get home. 

MMM yeah, the word on the street is that the KONK family is having money concerns unfortunately.  I'm doing everything I can to get caught up, and we'll get there, but sad as it is, I'm not sure what my deal is.  I'm optimistic that I'll be able to get out there and stay with friends and at least ride with everyone, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  Sorry for any inconvenience I may have caused with the fundage, it all kinda happened real sudden like.

 

I was doing more research on my back condition, and aside from the fact that it's actually quite rare to have a disk protrusion/herniated disk in the thoracic area of the spine, there is the ever present disclaimer that always stresses me out:

 

Complications

Like all surgical procedures, operations on the back may have complications. Because the surgeon is operating around the spinal cord, back operations are always considered extremely delicate and potentially dangerous. Take time to review the risks associated with thoracic spine surgery with your doctor. Make sure you are comfortable with both the risks and the benefits of the procedure planned for your treatment. Learn more about possible complications of spine surgery.

There are also possible complications specifically related to a thoracic disc herniation.

• Before surgery
• During surgery
• After surgery

Yikes.

Again, to anyone reading this thread that has back problems, I urge you to check out that site (rebuildyourback.com).  In a nutshell, I suffered with a herniated disc and severe sciatica for about 7 years.  I became a shell of the man I used to be... forget participating in sports and working out, I would have trouble just sitting in a chair for very long.  After doing the stretches in the book from this site I feel like I'm 16 again.  Surgery and all these medical prodedures can definitely help you, but if you don't educate yourself on your back and how to stretch it and keep it young then you'll likely experience back problems for the rest of your life.  I can't stress enough how good this site it... I promise you'll thank me.

Yeah it's a good site, thanks for the contribution.  Actually, I'm totally educated about everything and quite mobile.  I wouldn't consider myslef a shell of what I used to be by any means, and your situation sounds insanely painful and I can't imagine.  Mines not the end of the world, it's just that it's T4-5 and that's a weird area to have a protrustion/herniation because of the blood vessel wrapping to the front right there, and the reduced spinal canal area, etc.  and if I REALLY blew it out I could be paralized for a bit and need emergency surgery, so it just kinda creeps me out.  I'm very much proactive and overall I'm still in pretty good shape, but I can definately see how something like this could progress and take you right out of the game. 

 

 

Yeah, I figured you might not be in quite as bad of shape that I was since you still seem pretty active.  I'm just saying that if this site could heal a back injury as bad as mine, I think it would take care of about any back problem.  Even for those of you without back problems, or maybe just a flare up here and there, this stretches on this site will help you have a healthy back for the rest of your life.  I don't know about you all, but I plan on snowboarding as long as I can physically do it... and I would imagine that a bad back is probably one of the top if not #1 reason why people have to quit as they get older. 

Scam?  That's hilarious.  There is a forum on the site where 1000's of people (including myself) discuss the book and the stretches and share success stories as a result of the book.  Look, I went to physical therapy because of my disc for about 2 months and quit due to how worthless it was for me.  Luckily my mom picked up the bill on those visits because I was still young, but I know it ran her at least $2000 and that's after insurance paid their percentage.  Then I found this site and donated $8 (although I guess they have a $10 minimum now) and learned about over 100 exercises and stretches that my therapist never showed me, and most importantly that worked and eventually completely healed my back and sciatica.  And you want to call it a scam?  Let me just give you the basic idea of this book and the stretches... over the years, we do so much damage to our back just from sitting and lifting incorrectly and countless other things, it's just a fact of life.  Because of this, all of our tendons and small inner muscles get damaged and shorten and our discs get dried out (when we are young, before doing all the damage, our discs are lubricated with a jelly like substance).  What the stretches and exercises do is reverse all the damage by getting our tendons and muscles back to normal and getting the juices flowing again on our discs.  Now tell me this doesn't make sense to you?  If you're wondering why I'm even taking the time to vouch for this site, it's just because I'm a walking success story and it's the least I can do to share something that works with other people.  I've said if a million times, I honestly feel like I'm 16 again after 7 years of continuous back/leg pain and not being able to do any intense activities.  Now I can snowboard all day, or whatever I want and my back doesn't even cross my mind.  So if that's not worth $10 to you, then I don't know what to tell ya.  Hell, I'll Paypal you the $10 if you want... just as long as you do yourself a favor check out this book and get your back fixed. 

Actually, I just realized that I still have the PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file of the entire book on my computer.  I'll email it to you if you want it, just let me know.  All arguments aside man, I just really want you to know that you're missing out on a good thing if you don't give it a try.

Eh, just to throw my two cents in, for anyone who experiences back or any other consistent pain and doesn't have enough education on how to work it out (though most of us seem well educated and athletic) any info is priceless in the long run.  Not to beat the drum to death, but for me Yoga has been the miracle, even though my situation is a disk thing, the muscles around it need to be strong in order to prevent it from flaring up more often.  Therefore, the more I stretch and strengthen my core the better I feel.  Ha, the funny thing is the more I talk about it the more aware of it I am, hence the power of visualization, both negative AND positive. 

Just sent the book... get back to me and let me know what you think.  I suggest you also join the forums on the website.  It's not extremely active, but there are always a few members that always respond and give advice. 

Typical situation for me, woke up this morning, didn't do any stretches because I woke up late and had to rush to work, and wouldncha know it, right when I was putting my jacket on, I tweaked my arm around in a funky way and *click* there it went, and it's been irratating me all day.  Anyone else know what I'm talking about with the little *click* you get right before something goes horribly wrong.  I even tried to manage it right then, before the pain set in, but no matter how I moved, it just happened, and I got that old familiar stab right next to my spine, feels like somebody stuck an ice pick in my back right there.  It feels like I have broken glass in place of my spine in that area, such a drag.  I've been through it enough, I'll feel it for days, and that's if I stretch a lot and take good care of it. 

 

The last time I had a flare up it was when I was driving down the road, had a cup of coffee in my right hand and needed to adjust the rear view mirror, so reached over with my left hand to the mirror and *click* there ya go.  Bummer!!