Banjo1964

Thanks for your reply Doctor. My initial problem was a ruptured disk between C5 and C6. I think I incurred the damage when I was around 19 working at the airport. Through the 1980’s and my early marriage in the early 1990’s, I didn’t have much problem except for occasional grinding headaches, When my wife and I lived overseas in South Korea in 1995 and 1996m the problems began to increase with pain, but a great Korean masseuse helped quite a bit when I needed relief. When we returned stateside in 1997 us when I would say the dreadful facet joint headaches started. The surgery in Enid in 1998 was a C5-6 Discectomy with fusion from my hip bone, no plate. I do not know what happened to the hip bone in my neck, but things got bad enough in 2010 to seek out Kris Lewenowsky, who had a good reputation at the time. He performed the Corpectomy over C5-6 with an autograft from a cadaver tibia bone that he misshaped and evidently forced in. The reason the surgeon didn’t correct the bad graft is because he had his license taken away by the KS Board of Healing Arts and then went to a dry-out facility somewhere. I didn’t really know I had a problem until Dr. Dickerson opened me up in 2013 to do the 360 degree and told me afterward that the autograft didn’t fit the slot Lewenowsky made for it, and had subsequently eaten through my vertebrae to where it had nearly severed by vertebrae to cause a broken neck. I felt nominally better well after the 2013 Surgery, enough to get off the opioids for 6 months. Then the pain began to increase and Dickerson performed the laminectomy and supposedly opened up the C6-7 and perhaps T1 lamina and removed bone spurs. I have not been right since that last operation. I awake sometimes with my hands or fingers totally numb. If I hold my arm up my fingers go numb on my right hand mostly, but have had issues in my left. I find that I carry my left arm up to my side across my chest like a sling to get comfort whenever I am not using it. I would say the levels that they work on had to be C5 and C6 with possibly C4, because the last MRI before that had to switch to CT Mylograms to see anything showed a huge graft that looks 3″ tall. My symptoms after the laminectomy have been increasing by the month, with the latest thing being these terrible facet joint headaches that happen when barometric pressure is either rising or lowering, and they are getting unbearable where oxycodone 15 mg and 10-325s are not having any effect in lessening pain. If I am not a candidate for a spinal cord simulator with all this hardware, scarring and wear, what other options are there? Up to 8 months ago I could lay down on my back or side and get mostly relief, but now that is going away.