The Present
From August to early December 2017, @millennialnow's progress would finally become tangible. The setback caused by surgery no longer seemed a big deal. On one particularly wet December afternoon, millennialnow was rear-ended when he stopped at a red light turning left onto a major highway. The blessing in getting rear-ended is that he was wearing his cervical collar at the time of the accident. He could have been greatly injured if not for the cervical collar. On the flipside, the curse in getting rear-ended is that he still experienced enough whiplash to reinjure parts of his neck and undo much of the hard work his therapist poured into him.
Two steps forward one step back - that's how much of these last two and half years have felt. After progressing so much last fall, getting rear-ended felt devastating; however, when you have the best physical therapist in the state of Alabama, much can still be accomplished. At the start of this new year, everything fell into rhythm with therapy twice a week. The new year also brought millennialnow a new neurologist, which proved to be a wonderful God-send. He'd seen a neurologist before, who was content with prescribing low-dosage pain medicine and not much else unfortunately. His new neurologist immediately proved to be a much better fit. She and her colleagues at her practice have experience in treating people with chronic migraines. For the first time since this journey began, millennialnow was prescribed medicine with the explicit purpose of treating his migraines.
Finding the migraine medicine that works best is kind of like finding your favorite jelly bean flavor - you've got to try a lot of beans before that perfect flavor reveals itself. Usually, each appointment with the neurologist means a new medicine; yet because millennialnow suffers from myofascial pain and his intense migraines are trigged by his neck injury, medicines typically used to treat migraine may not work. His therapist mentioned he might benefit from Lyrica, a medicine often used to treat nerve and muscle pain; so, he asked his neurologist to prescribe Lyrica and it's helped! The way he describes it is that if he's a seven on the scale of pain, Lyrica will bring that pain down to a five. Again, not a cure-all but definitely helpful.
With physical therapy and new medications, it has felt like we're on our way to recovery. I bet you know what comes next, don't you? For several months, millennialnow has had increasing pain in his right shoulder. His therapist has attempted to rehab the should but to no avail. In fact, the pain in his shoulder has even hindered his progress in therapy. Every time he attempts to move up on resistance bands or use weights in the effort to strengthen his muscles, he hits the proverbial wall. Finally, he had no choice and scheduled an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon.
I know you may be thinking something along the lines of Wait, she hasn't mentioned an injured shoulder before. That's because his shoulder has only been a small part of the puzzle until recently. We don't know exactly how his shoulder got injured but the theory is that it occurred with the initial neck injury, was irritated by surgery last spring (during the same surgery on his back he also had a much smaller cyst removed from his right shoulder), and really exacerbated by the car accident in December.
Yesterday, he had his first appointment with the surgeon. For temporary relief, he received a cortisone shot in his shoulder. On Saturday, he's scheduled to have an MRI on his neck, and next Tuesday, he's scheduled to have an MRI on his shoulder. The MRI on his shoulder should determine whether or not he needs surgery to correct whatever is wrong with his shoulder. No one likes to have surgery but we do look forward to the possibility that surgery can fix his shoulder and he can move forward with therapy on his neck. This could very well be one of the last few puzzle pieces.
Oh! He's also scheduled to begin Botox treatments in June. Apparently Botox can successfully treat migraines. There will be more updates from me as we learn more. In the meantime, look for part four coming soon. I want to share some of my takeaways from our journey.
Missed parts one and two? Check them out!
https://steemit.com/life/@queenvick/our-journey-with-a-neck-injury-pt-1-the-beginning
https://steemit.com/story/@queenvick/our-journey-with-a-neck-injury-pt-2-the-next-steps