Hi, Nemo1. 🙂

Thank you for your kind words. My faith is what is giving me strength and I try know to just take one day at a time. It can all be so overwhelming and depressing but my daily hope pulls me through.

My first investigation of my low back/hip/leg pain in 2011 took me from my primary care doctor to a rheumatologist then an orthopedic doctor. That is when I was diagnosed with severe congenital lumbar stenosis but the surgeon wanted to hold off on doing surgery.

Then, my symptoms got worse and the list expanded in 2017. I went from my primary doctor (who did cervical/lumbar MRIs), to a foot doctor, then an orthopedic doctor and neurosurgeon who referred me to a neurologist, then to a rheumatologist, etc. I was diagnosed with the iron deficiency (by my neurologist!), small fiber neuropathy, radiculopathy, hearing loss, and MS/lupus/RA was ruled out at the time. Not many answers or treatments. I started to take alpha Lipoic acid for the burning/tingling/numbness in my feet (never diagnosed with diabetes) which helped some. Other medications made it hard to work/function (muscle relaxers, etc.) so I was really not taking anything else for pain other than lidocaine patches/creams and ibuprofen (which was destroying my stomach and has caused gastritis/esophagitis). In hindsight, my thyroid Hashimoto’s diagnosis was missed by my rheumatologist (blood tests showed thyroid autoantibodies).

Symptoms continued to worsen and I fell/broke my foot while walking late 2018 (was dizzy/lost balance on a walking path). In 2019, my rheumatologist and neurologist did tons of testing but really no diagnoses/treatments (felt like a waste of time/money). My neurologist finally referred me to a spine pain center after my cervical MRI showed spinal cord flattening and EMG showed I had right arm radiculopthy. He NEVER said or recommended to me or the spine center to urgently address the cervical myelopathy (spinal cord injury…I didn’t know about this or understood the seriousness of it at the time)! When I got to the spine center late 2019, they recommended I see a psychologist for living with chronic pain, prescribed Cymbalta for nerve/osteoarthritis pain and physical therapy, and eventually recommended lumbar spine injections which I started to get in late 2020. No one focused on my cervical spine myelopathy!

Fast forward to late 2021 when my symptoms kept worsening, I sought out a new orthopedic doctor who immediately diagnosed me with cervical spondylitic myelopathy c5 c6 (causing many symptoms below the spinal cord injury) and recommended urgent surgery to prevent further damage and try to recover function of my bladder, ability to walk without feeling I was wearing cement boots, not dropping everything I tried to hold/carry, etc. There was some improvement after surgery early 2022.

I then shifted attention to residual symptoms and my lumbar spine (stenosis/spondylosis/DDD) Later in 2022, the ct scan for my cervical surgery showed I had a nodule and ultrasound and biopsy showed it was suspicious so my right lobe was removed (had micro-cancer and confirmed Hashimoto’s and caused hypothyroidism). I had breast implants removed in mid-2023 in case they were causing breast implant illness symptoms (saline implants both ruptured but the silicone liners have toxins in them). I was having autoimmune-like symptoms and “flares” but a new rheumatologist ruled out RA/lupus.

After all of this and losing my job in August 2023, I sank into a deep depression where I didn’t want to live anymore (wasn’t going to commit suicide but just felt like I wanted to give up). My primary doctor put me on new antidepressants and through many bad side effects, was able to get to better dosages that balanced brain chemistry (she put me in too high a dose of fluoxetine and bupropion combined and I tapered off to 20 mg fluoxetine every other day and 75 mg bupropion). Fluoxetine made me extremely apathetic and I may want to wean off this. I certainly do t need more apathy! 😉

Yesterday, I was just diagnosed with biliary dyskinesia (gallbladder only releasing 7% bile when it should be a minimum of 35%-40%). This seems tied to my central nervous system/neuropathy (gallbladder function/muscle/motility impacted). My new neurologist, that I am hoping to schedule with asap, will need to do an updated brain MRI for MS/white matter degeneration (myelopathy may have impacted my brain in addition to my spinal cord) and autonomic neuropathy affecting my heart, lungs, and digestive system (i.e., gallbladder). Every day I feel I am having a harder time standing up and walking. Everything seems to be slowing down/shutting down/weakening gradually.

Daily hope❣️