I had surgery Jan. 13. The lead up to it went very quickly once things got rolling. I saw the neurosurgeon my rheumatologist had been wanting me to see for at least a couple months on Jan. 5. He scheduled the surgery for the 13th, and I conveniently already had an appointment scheduled with my new primary care doctor on Fri. Jan. 7 so she could do the routine pre-op testing. I saw my rheumatologist again Jan. 11th, 2 days before the surgery.
The surgery itself was late in the afternoon and seems to have been a success. Initially the neurosurgeon said, based on imaging, he was going to do a diskectomy and fusion at C5-7 (another earlier neurosurgeon proposed C5-6), but in the end he did C4-7.
I won't go into all the details now about what exactly happened at the hospital after the surgery, etc., but I just wanted to say now that going to C4 gives credence to my conviction the whole time that my head and facial symptoms were from the neck. Some doctors were skeptical about that, even thinking there might be something psychological going on, which I guess was because the imaging didn't support my belief.
So here's what I understand now about it. C1 to C4 there's a network of nerves (the cervical plexus) emanating out from the spinal cord going back up to the head. So including C4 in the surgery backed me up. And the day after the surgery the neurosurgeon and his assistant came to me in the hospital and asked how my arms were, but I practically brushed that question aside in my excitement at how my head felt so much better. The doctor said then that they hadn't been sure if that part of the surgery was going to be successful or not, so there must have been something about it that was difficult to repair. I still have some head/face symptoms, but they're getting less troublesome. But it's these symptoms that make me tired, so when I get them, usually sometime late afternoon (I'm due for a nap as I write this). I hope they eventually go away completely. but if not it'll definitely be an immense improvement from before the surgery.
The other thing I learned too is that at C4 there's a nerve called the phrenic nerve that branches out from the spinal cord, and this nerve controls the diaphragm - which controls breathing. Evidently there's a saying that goes "Cut 4, breathe nor more," meaning cut that nerve at C4 and a person will stop breathing.
I think I was having some symptoms that this nerve might have been affected by the stenosis, but I'm just glad now that I'm over the worst part of it and on the recovery side of the surgery. It was really, really awful before the surgery, especially the head symptoms, though. Sometimes it was hard to fully explain what it was like, what I was feeling. I felt from early on an urgency about these symptoms, and I think in hindsight it was quite reasonable to feel that way.
Eventually I'll get back to this blog, but it might be a little while longer.
