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@mydogsbestfriend

I am a 76 yr old female and had severe cervical pain 40 years ago. It was diagnosed as osteoarthritis with bone spurs & pinched nerves. No surgery was recommended. I did have cortisone injections and used an over the door setup using a weird harness under my chin and a bag of water ( medicine has advanced in 40 years). Those things worked but I had to use the contraption 3x a day (luckily I could go home for lunch & lived 10 minutes from work). I was also told to gently stretch my neck by moving my head around. Since then I have had more spinal pain, injections were no help and I decided against surgery. I try to be as active as possible ( walking, no jarring running). I also tried CBD with THC capsules purchased online. They may have helped, I took them for about 3 months and I still have spinal pain. I am resisting any surgery and just try to remain active. Losing some weight helps me but I was never obese, just about 10 lbs overweight.

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@mydogsbestfriend

Thank you for your response. Sorry I'm so late to reply. I applaud you for doing all you can to avoid surgery. I'm sorry you've had to deal with pain. I've heard the injections often don't work so I'm avoiding those. I'm doing all I can to be careful with my movements, the way I'm lifting, not twisting when I lift, things like that. My pain is tolerable and not constant. I can go through days where I'll have a week or two of pain in my arms or wrists. I can usually stop the pain with five days of Advil or Naproxen and sometimes using heat helps. I think there is a lot to remaining active without overdoing it. I also think you're right about losing some weight. I can stand to lose a good 20-25 pounds so I think I'm going to make that a priority. Thank you for the reminder. Anything I can do to help this along I will. I'm 68 and would really like to be able to manage this without surgery. And if I do eventually need surgery, I'd like to wait it out until I'm no longer working. I run a home childcare and preschool with 9 young children babies to age 5. I do some lifting of course but I'm extremely careful. Fortunately most of my kids are walking so I don't have to do much lifting. I'm due to lose a kindergartener and gain a new baby so I'll have to be extra careful. Not sure how many more years I'll be doing this. I love it and am hoping I can keep doing it for some time to come. If I have to, I could only take children who walk and are potty trained and turn this more into a preschool than daycare. I've thought about it.