@dgcosentino831 I understand now. As a radiologist, you would know how to read your images, and that an MRI 4 years old may not show an accurate evaluation at this time. I'm writing this response to you, but also for the community, so I may be explaining things that you already know where other members may benefit too. My background is that I considered going into medicine and got a biology degree, then worked in research for a neuro-anatomist at a university instead. I left that and went to art school, but had studied anatomy as part of my biology degree and art school, so I can understand a lot of medical literature, and I learned a lot in the 2 years I spent looking for a surgeon to help me. I also have been working with an expert physical therapist who has taught me a lot while under her care.

Where do you have stenosis? For me, it was spinal cord compression because of a collapsed C5/C6 disc with a disc/osteophyte complex pressing into the cord in front. I was charting my pain and nerve symptoms on a body diagram dermatome map over about a year. On MRIs 9 months apart, the osteophytes doubled in area by spreading to the other side of the ruptured disc material. I didn't have foraminal stenosis, only in the central canal. I had pain all over my body that changed location with different head and neck positions, and that confused a lot of surgeons and symptoms in every dermatome. It is called funicular pain, and it was because I was reading medical literature, I ran across that term, looked it up, and I found literature with medical cases like mine that described it as a "rare" presentation of cervical stenosis. I chased surgeons for 2 years and none would help until I got to Mayo after I found that medical literature because of reading a Mayo surgeon's literature.

I'm sure this is very frustrating for you when you know what is going on and understand why, but can't get an appointment. Just prior to my surgery, if I flexed my neck forward and down over the bone spurs, I sent an electric shock down my entire body. If I side bent my head, I did get a burning pain down my arm because the foramen was a smaller space due to the collapsed disc (50% height) and didn't have enough space for that move without hitting the nerve root. The difference between radicular pain and cord compression pain is that radicular pain from foraminal stenosis is very predictable as to what nerve is affected and what body part according to a dermatome map. Cord compression can affect anything below that level depending on how the cord is positioned as it floats and moves within the canal and is subject to change.

My very first sign of cervical canal stenosis was when I turned my head to the left, I got a pain in my ankle like something was biting me. If I turned my head back straight again, it went away. It was reproducible. As time went on and there was more compression and pressure, the pains just moved all over my body and I could not totally eliminate them, but changing body position did change where they were and reduced some of it. I also had 2 mm of retrolisthesis at the bad disc, and when spasms moved my vertebrae out of alignment, it caused gait disturbances and I walked with a limp with my foot kind of slapping the floor with each step. That was something that I remembered happened right after a whiplash injury about 20 years earlier that had led me to the same symptoms with an aging spine. I was working with a physical therapist who would realign everything and correct my gait until the next spasm caused it to happen again. I also had intermittent difficulty fully emptying my bladder because of the retrolisthesis, and that was also corrected by better spine alignment. (Cervical cord compression can cause incontinence of bowel and bladder function.) Essentially, when a vertebrae slips in a direction out of alignment because the disc is not strong enough to hold it in place, the spinal canal gets smaller causing increased symptoms. It is kind of like a string of beads, and if you pull one sideways, it puts pressure on the string. I charted these intermittent problems and knew how changing my body position was changing them. This helps figure out what is happening and something a neurologist would probably want to know.

Can you share what symptoms you are experiencing that you think may be spine related? Have you considered making a drawing of your symptoms to chart how the symptoms have changed over time? I'll help any way that I can from what I have learned through my experience.

Jennifer