Home and settled in. Here's the full story...
** Cliff's Notes at end **
CHIROPRACTOR PART 1: Had some minor back problems earlier this year. Saw a chiropractor for the first time. Great success with lower back. He tweaked me a bit and gave me some advice about the lumbar issue I was having. I was sceptical about seeing a chiropractor at first, but after this I was convinced chiropractors weren't just witch doctors.
ONSET OF NERVE ISSUES: Was hitting golf balls at the range in late June midweek. Started to feel some pain behind my left shoulder. Figured it was muscular and didn't even finish hitting the bucket I had paid for.
Was supposed to play in a tournament that Saturday followed by a golf trip to Spokane the week after. Got through about 14 holes in the tourney and started to really hurt in the shoulder. Toughed it out and made it back to the clubhouse. Was going through the scorecard with a buddy and remember saying to him, "Something is really wrong here".
Spent the next day in car driving to Spokane across Washington state. Was uncomfortable, but not as much pain as I had at the tourney. Was supposed to have a Monday tee time. Again, toughed it out with similar results. Pain came back and regretted playing after about 14 holes.
Spent the next four days in a conference. Horrible pain all week that started to work its way down my left arm and into my left hand. Pointer and middle finger were numb with pins and needles all four days. Drove home feel pretty bad during the 6 hours in the car. Couldn't get comfortable at all. Left arm and shoulder were just killing me. The worst pain was waking up in the morning. Trying to put on my socks was excruciating.
CHIROPRACTOR PART 2: Great success with the guy the first time around, figured why not again? He immediately told me I was likely pinching either the median or ulnar nerve, but wrongly assumed it was a muscle issue in my neck or shoulder. Twisted me a bit and sent to physical therapy. Physical therapist also assumed this was a muscle issue. Both were horribly wrong. Chiropractor had me take an X-ray and told me it looked great. No problems. Must be muscular issue. Spent about a month going to physical therapy and showing no improvement. After all of this a good friend of mine that's a nurse suggested I get an MRI. So I got back to the chiropractor and tell him I want to get an MRI. He says sure, but I could tell right off the bat he was out of his element. He should of told me to go see my primary doctor as this was something he wasn't used to dealing with, but he sort of winged it. He didn't know that I had to get it approved by my insurance first. He gave me a blank form and told me to call the number on it to set up the appointment. He didn't say anything about insurance or seem to have the first clue about how to get my insurance to approve it. The day of the appointment I get a call from the imagining place telling me the appointment has been canceled because it needed insurance approval. Immediately I knew I ####ed up by trusting the chiropractor. Damn.
PRIMARY CARE DOCTOR: Made an appointment that same day to see my primary care doctor. He immediately knew what was wrong and fast tracked me into an MRI the following week. MRI showed I had a rather severe stenosis (disc out of whack) between C6 and C7. Got a phone call the next day and the radiologist described to pictures to me. Told me my disk in that area had blown nearly all the way out and was jammed in the hole on the left side where the nerve comes out. Nerve was being compressed causing all the pain. Mind you, I'm dying on a daily basis with arm pain and numbness. Onto the specialist.
SPINE SPECIALIST: Sat down the following week with the spine doctor and he showed me the pics. Told me I had options. We can schedule an ACDF (pic above in first post) right away to take care of this. I'm thinking great, lets do this. Find out I have to schedule it at least a month away if I want to do it on a Friday so I don't miss as much school...
SCHOOL SITUATION: I teach advanced placement classes. They're electives. I have to do a bit of sales to convince kids to take these classes and keep them full enough to offer them. I teach in a small school. We graduate about 100 kids per year. Part of the sales job is that I have to sell me. Its not like I can miss a lot of time and we can easily find a sub to just take over. The testing days for kids to determine whether or not they earn college credit are fixed in May. We can't afford to fall behind. So when I talk to the doctor about this he tells me he thinks I can likely be back in front of my class in 5 days. We look ahead in the calendar and see veteran's day weekend and figure its perfect. I'll miss two class days and its far enough out I can plan around it to give tests and review days. So its been about three months dealing with this all together and I don't want to sit around in pain for another month so the doctor tells me about...
STEROIDS: Holy ####. Miracle drug. Within three days steroids completely wiped out my pain (this was early October). It was amazing. It was transforming. They put me on a regiment of roids that would taper off in a week (prednisone). My pain totally disappeared. We're talking life changing here. Nurse and doctor both tell me its not a shocker and that they will wear off in about a month and my pain would return. I get the whole sports and performance enhancing angle now. The steroids reduce swelling and promote healing to extreme degrees. Guys taking these can rebound so much quicker after a work out. Again, holy ####.
A WEEK BEFORE SURGERY: I have my pre-op meeting with Doctor. He tells me all the nutty things that can go wrong and all the weird side effects that are possible. Totally a cover your ### type of thing. I get it. They are required to disclose this. I wasn't too worried about that though. The thing I was worried about was that I was feeling GREAT over the past three to four weeks. I even golfed a ton. Seriously, steroids are the ####. No pain. No symptoms. I'm really debating this surgery. I'm convinced I can just roid it up again and put it off until the two week break at Christmas. Doctor advises against it tell me that another month of roids can be pretty damaging. They really have to overload you with these things to get the swelling to go down and relieve the pain. Crap. Oh well, onto surgery...
SURGERY DAY: Checked in at 5:30am on Friday. Had to strip down and get in the butt showing robe. Of course my admitting nurse is young and hot. Great. Worse, she knows it. Trying hard to tuck the growing issue between my legs. A bit unsuccessfully, but managed to keep that imagine of the ugly chick from college in my mind. Meet the anesthesiologist and assisting nurses. Sit around for an hour before getting wheeled into operating room. WIthin minutes I'm out cold. Man, they knock you out quickly. I guess it makes sense. They don't want you getting all panic stricken in there.
Wake up to the hottie again in post op. Feel the wound on the front of my lower neck. Surprisingly no pain in the spine, but hey, what's that feeling? Holy ####. Pain had 100% returned to my shoulder, bicep, forearm, and my ####### hand and fingers are numb again. No ####. I just went from a month of no pain to have an operation that brought it all back. No way. Of course the nurse asks where it hurts. I tell her the details. She tells me, "Well, that sort of sucks". I'm thinking WTF? Really? Another nurse sort of barges in to say that it might be expected. When an impinged nerve is severely compressed it can swell up quite a bit when the impingement is removed. Great, but what does the doctor have to say about this...
Started feeling better as the day wore on. Fell asleep a few times. Around 6:00 a group of friends show up to hang out with me for a bit. At this point I'm feeling great. Perhaps they just lifted my spirits, but the pain is really fading. Also, I've got almost no pain from the procedure. They just put four titanium screws in my spine. Shouldn't that hurt? And I had received very little pain medication. What gives?
TODAY: Doctor shows up and fills me in. Tells me the nerve pain coming back is expected for a few days. Just over 24 hours I can tell its slowly dissipating. Also tells me that there are no nerves in the upper cervical spine, so putting screws in the vertebrae isn't something that should hurt. Sweet. He opted to use a "cage" instead of a cadaver bone. There's some good examples pictured
here. He used some material from my hip to fill it up. In his opinion it fuses quicker and has a better shot at jiving with my own bone material because it came from me. I'm good with all that. Also, he had the procedure done on his own neck and that was what he chose for himself.
Started to cough a bit during the day and pulling up some phlegm. Hurts my upper chest area quite a bit where the plastic tube was inserted during operation. Neck is actually feeling pretty good. Getting ready to crash tonight. Was able to make it through the day taking only Tylenol. Going to drop a Valium and a Percocet. Hoping that will help me sleep. Starting to feel the soreness in my upper chest and upper back between the shoulder blades. Not where I expected to feel it.
That's the long version. Figure that perhaps someone else might need the procedure and would like to read about the experience.
CLIFFS:
Trusted chiropractor too much
Spent extra two months in pain
Went to primary care guy
MRI revealed spinal stenosis
Steroids completely removed all pain for a month
Went through with surgery anyway
Regretted it for about an hour when pain came back
Doctor filled me in and assured me I did the right thing
On the way to long term recovery
Wondering when I will next hit a golf ball
will be tipping one for you 
