cervical radiculopathy?

Posted by dez1978 @dez1978, Sep 25, 2023

Hello. New here. I have a disc bulging and severe narrowing at c5/6 and bone spurs and whatnot. My 2 most anoying symptoms are horrible headaches and my arms get really heavy and numb ish. Not sure how to expalin it. Its not really numb, but they get heavy and feel warm and don't want to move right, if that makes sense. Like at work I'll be using my mouse, but sometimes I can't get my hand to do what it is supposed to do. I do sometimes get the pins and needles thing or my fingertips will go numb. But this whole thing with my arms feeling "disconnected" is driving me batty. I had an ESI at c5/6 6 days ago. So far I don't really notice any difference. The dr wanted to see if that made any difference before we talked about the next steps. I just wondered if anyone else had experinced this feeling in their arms and what eventually helped?

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windyshores | @windyshores | Sep 25, 2023

Yes,,,I have a certain base level of symptoms with exacerbations. Legs too. Honestly the thing that helps me the most is Ben Gay on my neck. BioFreeze is good too. It can get to a point where surgery is needed but I am not there. Lidocaine injections did more harm than good for me. I have gotten massage at PT with ultrasound for 10 months. The benefit is short-lived but gives me a break.

Jennifer, Volunteer Mentor | @jenniferhunter | Sep 25, 2023

@dez1978 I sounds to me like you are headed for surgery. When nerves are compressed, it interrupts the electrical signal to your muscles and they don't work right. If your neck has muscle spasms it can also be moving the vertebrae around and can close down some of the spaces where the nerves exit between vertebrae. That is how radiculopathy is. You are having symptoms that affect your function, so I suspect you will be offered surgery. I am a spine surgery patient, and had a C5/C6 fusion without hardware. I did not have radiculopathy, only spinal cord compression inside the central canal. I did not think this the surgery was too bad. It was not even close to the pain I had from surgery and healing of a broken ankle. When I woke up from spine surgery, my preexisting pain was gone. At that time, there are some local anesthesia injections in place, so that first day is not bad, but it got more painful about the 2nd day. I felt awful from the pain medicine and opted not to take it because I could cope with the pain from the surgical path. It is healing pain then which is a good thing.