I laid in bed for quite a while after waking up this morning, my face aglow from the dim light of my cellphone as I doom-scrolled through social media, a guilty pleasure of mine.

My head perched atop two pillows, with one slightly offset to create somewhat of an incline, I forced my neck and head into their softness, feeling the pillows give way as the sound of my spine grinding, and eventually popping, permeated through my skull. I felt the familiar clicking of my vertebrae adjusting into position radiating into my shoulders, as a sensation that I could only describe as a million pin-pricks cascaded through my right arm and into my hand.

Such has become the norm as I foray into my second major chapter of living with spinal stenosis, a condition that sees the spinal canal of the diagnosed narrow over time, resulting in neurological issues as the spinal cord itself becomes compressed.

Although in the past few years I’ve dismissed the Parkinson-like tremors I’ve experienced through my biceps, and triceps, and my decreasingly steady hands, but as the agonizing shoulder pain, numbness in my hands, and tingling in my arms set in, I had a good hunch as to the source.

In 2013, after an inexplicable onset of partial paralysis in my left arm that saw me unable to perform simple tasks, such as lifting a gallon of milk, and with excruciating pain in my neck that left me unable to sleep, several visits to my primary care physician came to a startling, at least to me, diagnosis. My doctor, who attempted to write it off as a pinched nerve in my neck due to having slept wrong, would eventually send me for an MRI, and upon calling me in for a follow up appointment, broke the news to me.

He began- “Well, David. I have some good news, and some bad news,”

Rarely taking anything too seriously, I retorted, “Alright, Doc, shoot it to me straight, how long do I have to live?”

“Well, you’ll never play in the NFL,” he quipped.

“Well shit, doc! There goes my fuckin’ backup plan if the railroad didn’t work out!” I joked back, both of us attempting to lighten the mood.

Through his thick Jamaican accent, he continued- “You have a condition known as spinal stenosis, which means that your spine doesn’t have as much room as it needs, and your C5 and C6 vertebrae have shifted, and they are impinging upon your spinal cord, which is causing the paralysis. We’re going to try some physical therapy, and hopefully that will get things back where they should be. Ultimately, you need to avoid high-impact things like running, horseback riding, roller coasters, and things like that, because they can cause complications, up to and including complete paralysis.”

So there it was. Luckily, as a rabid fan of the Corvette, which breaks up it’s generational production periods as “C1 (1953-1962), C2 (1963-1967), C3 (1968-1982),” etc…, it was quite easy for me to remember that the C5 and C6 were the vertebrae impacted.

Fortunately, through physical therapy, which saw me fumble through a myriad of exercises, deep tissue massages, and even traction, which had my body affixed to a bed while a device, strapped to my head, stretched my neck with the ultimate goal of pulling the vertebrae back into their proper position, eventually set me right. The strength returned to my left arm, as measured by a grip strength measurement tool via my hand, and by tracking the increases in weight through my exercises, and the numbness, although never completely gone, was much less noticeable, at least to the extent that I could return to work and function normally in my day-to-day goings on.

Either way, knowing I had this unpredictable ticking time-bomb that could be triggered by nearly anything, especially at work, which saw my body frequently endure unpredictable impacts as I rode on the side of railroad cars, was disconcerting. As quickly as my seniority allowed, I entered locomotive engineer training, and upon being furloughed (a common railroad industry term for being ‘laid off’), I entered management in 2016, all of which served to reduce the risk potential for triggering my spinal stenosis.

Fast forward a decade, and here we are. Likely triggered through riding rollercoasters at Dollywood over the summer (what an absolutely blast), my symptoms have returned, but reversed- This time in my right side. Luckily, this time around, I haven’t experienced the lack of grip or muscle strength that I felt in 2013, but the pain, and numbness are very similiar. 

An MRI was ordered, and the results were disheartening. The issues were now between my C4, C5, C6, and C7 vertebrae, and my spine was now arthritic. Two discs had degenerated to the extent that, although my body attempted to regenerate them, since it could not re-create Cartlidge, it created bone spurs instead. 

So here I am. 40 years old, with arthritis in my spine, and bone spurs and shifted vertebrae impinging upon the nerves of my spinal cord to trigger phantom pains in my neck and shoulders, and numbness into my right arm.

Still, I’m painfully aware that things could be much worse as I empathetically watch a close friend of mine, a former Army Ranger in peak athletic form, in his battle through Stage IV cancer, with his most recent surgical procedure serving to remove the left lobe of his liver. He died on the operating table, but was thankfully brought back to tell the tale.

As for me, it was back to physical therapy, however, this time around things would be different. As it turned out, the insurance we now carry would not cover the therapy until our deductible was met, and although it was a good sign that my family was healthy throughout 2023, meeting my deductible in the end of November didn’t seem like the greatest financial decision (hooray for the American medical system), so I decided to hold off until January. Fortunately, through the few visits I did engage in, I was able to right the ship enough to keep the symptoms manageable enough to make it into 2024.

With that said, I’m very much enjoying everybody’s highlight reels on social media as they post pictures of everything they loved about 2023, and even I have a veritable smorgasbord of highlights to be grateful for, but I’m looking forward to 2024 as a jumping off point for the next chapter of what should be, hopefully, a happier, healthier, and more financially sound me.

Oh, and my new years resolution is to entertain you all (all two of you that read this) with at least one musing per week as I explore, in raw honesty, my life, and the world around me, so subscribe to stay tuned for what is to come.

Happy new years.

TL;DR- New Year, New Me! 😉

Love,
DMFF