I'm more broken than you

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Can you badger them into an MRI?

[Drunk Monk]

What might an MRI show that an X-ray wouldn't in regards to arthritis? I thought it was a pretty straight forward diagnosis. My Rock Med friends, at least the ones I've discussed this with, give me the impression that the X-ray is sufficient. I'm interested in what you think an MRI would show different.

[cranefly]

Arthritis seems a very general term. Did they say rheumatoid? Or just arthritis?
Anyway, from my understanding, an x-ray would detect any abnormalities in the hard tissues -- bone, cartilage, maybe tendons. An MRI would provide detail about the soft tissues.

I did some searches and found this website about Clinical Guidelines for CT/MRI of the spine. One could deduce from it that a CT or MRI are the better tools for determining disease, trauma or abnormality related to the spine. Yours would be cervical, right?

Anyway, for what it's worth, here's the link:

http://medpolicy.bluecrossca.com/policie...spine.html

By the way, was this a very sudden onset? Was there any mention of the possibility of a bacterial infection or something like that? Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm not exactly Dr. McCoy...

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Yup, I'm interested in nerve inflammation and what exactly is going on with your disks in your neck. If you have some fluid pressing on your nerves from a rupture/injury, x-ray won't show that.

I am not a doctor, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night...

[Drunk Monk]

There was no mention of rheumatoid, just arthritis. Onset was fairly sudden and it's only on one side. I have to do some follow up. My company has Kaiser, so it's a bit of a challenge to get answers sometimes. I have jury duty tomorrow. Figures. We come out of mercury in retrograde tomorrow too, so I'm putting some of this off until the communication channels clear.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

One of my fencers had a sudden onset neck pain that has led to weakness and limited motion on her sword arm. X-Ray not helpful for this nerve thing, so MRI was scheduled for today. If it is a problem with the bursa, that may not show on an Xray either.

"Arthritis" sounds very generic and Kaiser, like many "managed care" outfits is about easy answers, not necessarily correct answers. Did they offer high-powered anti-inflams? The headache thing you have going with it doesn't sound like any arthritis symptom I have heard. A second opinion would be worthwhile.

Especially if it is not an opinion from one of us. Maybe a doctor or something.

[Haggis Killer]

I gotta go along here. I've had xray's and mri's for head/spine related issues off and on for years. Hold out for the mri. The big thing I learned with my mri was that one of the cartilage disks in my spine is a wedge instead of a disk. Never showed that on the xrays. The xrays do show my arthritis, but arthritis hasn't ever thrown the kinds of symptoms you're talking about in my path. I've got the neck pain and the crackly noises, but it's been moping along for years and it doesn't spasm or cause headaches. I've got other reasons for headaches, but not arthritis.

Get someone to look at the soft tissue. And if it were me, I'd probably not do the excercises until I got looked at. If it's soft tissue damage that's causing the headaches, exercise could be compoundin the damage.

So sez Dr. HK. Not the "Doctor" kind of "Dr.".... unless it's Dr. Hogly Wogly time...

[Drunk Monk]

I will definitely get it checked out further. I had to get off jury duty today to open up my schedule. Got to get my cholesterol results too.

I've been doing Shaolin Kung Fu all along under one of three monks now at our school. I can still practice it with the pain - it actually feels really good. I'm rather peeved at the fact that I finally got my training schedule back on line and this happens. My master is getting into MMA so we weren't hooking up for lessons, so I switched back to Shaolin since now there's classes under one of the monks everyu weeknight. Since I can just do drop ins, that works around my family's schedule quite well. Of course, I'm very protective of my neck. I've also gone back to my daily baduanjin practice (8-section brocade - a common qigong practice that's very soft). That seems to help too. I keep thinking I should get back into tai chi, but there really isn't much for the neck there. Still, it might be beneficial and is frequently listed as an arthritis therapy.

I'm off the pain killers and muscle relaxants. I'm back on the ol' MSM chondriton & glucosamine blend, along with a lot of various jellies and gels to rub into my neck. I'm allergic to most dit da jow, but there are some other odd Asian/alternative topicals that are relieving.

The headaches passed a while ago, along with the hallucinations. Now it's just this wonky neck that constantly crackles like wadding up thick cellophane. It's left side only, like the bulk of my maladies. I swear, death will come to me from the left side. The hardest part is my tinnitus, which is also limited to the left side. Oh, my left eye is still a little blurry - got to make an appointment for that too.

Stacy did some massage which helped a lot. She just learned LaStone therapy and that's helpful. since it's been dogging me through a few shows now, I keep thinking I'll get some work done by some hippy friends. I've got some great access to that sort of stuff, but Stacy's really spoiled me with the depth and attentiveness of her work. Some hippy at a music festival isn't even in the ballgame there. I'm totally avoiding all the qi healers that are around me. I don't trust a lot of them. Many are psychic vampires. Many others try to be all macho about their healing work, which is absurd. There's this big face issue if they fail to get any results so they'd basic torture me until I cried 'uncle' and I hate that.

[The Queen]

Well, if anybody needs any, I apparently have plenty to spare. After doing so well with diet and exercise, I was ticked off when this year's check up came back with 265 total 185 LDL. Grrrrrrrr.

Doc's giving me two months to cut out all the cheating (no eggs, no shrimp with cashew, no pizza, no fast food) and then will retest. If the numbers don't come back down, I get to start taking meds. Sigh.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Join me, My Queen, in the Land of Lipitor!

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

If you don't go to the doctor, you don't have to hear the nasty aging news. And there are a lot fewer prescriptions. But there is a lot more hobbling and wincing.

[The Queen]

Join me, My Queen, in the Land of Lipitor!

You had me at "Join me, My Queen.." Sigh. :o

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

:o Aw, shucks, yer Highness..!

DM, my fencer with the shoulder/neck problem got the MRI results. Good news: no tears in either rotator cuff or other little ligaments. Bad news: massive nerve inflammation. Options: Quit fencing (both of us laughed at that) or no fencing + PT + Very Large Doses of anti-inflamms, 6 months, no guarantee, or....arthroscopic surgery and back to full throttle in 3 months.

[Haggis Killer]

Although I never considered back surgery, I had to make a similar decision. That's when I stopped fencing for 3 years. Also didn't take any running steps during that period. None. My back got back on track, but my conditioning never did. I'm just now getting back on my bike and trying to get some sort of aerobic thing happening.

But... 3 years off everything.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

True, it was three years off, but I noticed your marksmanship has really improved. HK can hit a mafia kingpin from over 1000 meters instead of just slicing them up like he used to. If you use your downtime wisely, you can still do meaningful work.