I have a incomplete SCI meaning a spinal cord injury well multiple ones in my cervical spine ie my neck . With one really bad spot at the c3 c4 level.
These are caused by spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease and arthritis in my spine.
I have hardware in my neck from c3 to ç7 meaning that area of my spine is fused together with said hardware.
I've had 2 cervical spine surgeries since 2015 .
Since 2016/17 I started to get the same symptoms I had pre 2015 with pain and numbness in my arms and hands.
As time went on things started to escalate, and my insurance is the blame for it due to their politics, we won't get into that here as it's a story of it's own.
I had to find a new Neuro surgeon which took a better part of 3 years to do again due to insurance politics.
It's now august of 2020 finally got in to see a neuro surgeon but COVID was going on though.
An MRI was ordered so was physical therapy which was an epic fail and made things worse .
At this point in time my arms were barely useable and numb to and including my fingers. I had intermittent issues with my legs too. And I was in excruciating pain.
At times I had some scary spells of being temporarily paralyzed from the neck down. It's not fun to be walking one second and then drop to the floor and not able to move arms or legs and not able to feel anything. Or laying in bed and have it happen.
That's a heavily reduced back story.
Now back in 2017 I started having issues with not being able to pee and or empty my bladder all the way.
I then started to ISC, then dealt with not only the retention but bouts of my bladder deciding to randomly either slowly leak or open the floodgates wide open. I started to wear diapers to catch the leaks and ISC.
Wearing diapers went from a safety net to having to wear 24/7 as the retention of pee went to larger and larger leaks then finally to total bladder incontinence.
Let's go back to 2020 for a few minutes, so I had the second surgery scheduled for early mid October 2020. The morning of surgery I got a phone call from the surgery department saying that the hospital was full of COVID patients and my surgery needed to be postponed.
The rescheduling, postponing and cancelling went on until mid February of 2021 .
In the time from October to February I went from having intermittent issues with walking to not able to stand or even walk , I was put in a wheelchair.
I was finally able to get the surgery in early March of 21. The day after surgery the surgeon told me things were really bad when he got in my spine in comparison to the MRI. Bad to the point of the disc at the c3 c4 level nearly severed my spinal cord rendering me a quadrapalegic. But he was able to get the pressure off my spinal cord but not without it being left severely damaged.
I've came along way but no where near 100% and likely will never get there either. I can walk short distance and can only stand for short periods of a few minutes. I'm still in a wheelchair but this where I'll be going forward.
Oh yeah since I'm fused from c3 to ç7 this means more spinal issues can and will be in my life going forward, it's a matter of when and where and how soon they'll happen.
The first fusion was c4 to ç7 this put pressure on the c3 c4 level.
This time not only my bladder was shut down and still is but half of my diaphragm is nonfunctioning. I have breathing issues and had to be put on oxygen 24 7.
If y'all have not guessed it yes that one c3 c4 level caused me a whole lot more issues than the first 3 in 2015 did. The first 3 where right in a row.
Sorry I had to bounce around the time line but needed to as to explain things.
Thanks
