I’ve been in awful shoulder/neck/upper arm pain for about four months and finally got an MRI today. The doc’s tentative pre-image DX are bulging C5/C6s causing nerve havoc.
So I have the images up on my computer and comparing them to online neck/head MRIs. I may be a mutant, 'cuz I only have a bit of visible spinal cord and some extra grey matter (and, of course, I’m Ph.Doc, not the other kind).
I see the doc on Friday; in the meantime, mulling over pics of my interior are fascinating (this is my first MRI).
My doctor had me MRI my inner ears a few weeks ago to make sure I didn’t have tumors or other deformities before I invested in hearing aids. I didn’t realize that I was getting an MRI of my entire head. You’re right, it’s fascinating! And kind of creepy, too. The cross sections through my eyeballs are… is that me? Eww!
I seem to have a normal brain, despite many childhood taunts from my brother.
Some years ago, mom lost most of her hearing in one ear. After a variety of exams, it turned out she had something, possibly some kind of tumor, compressing her nerves, and that she was risking more damages, like for instance facial paralysis. Even though they had hypothesis, they couldn’t tell with certainty what exactly it was, it could be serious and they needed to do some minor investigative surgery to tell.
Absolute refusal of mom. She’s elderly, very stubborn, and has lost during the last years quite a lot of her mental acuity. Basically, she didn’t want them to open her skull out of fear that they would damage her brain. No amount of telling her that they had no intent to open her skull, or to go anywhere near her brain could convince her.
Two years passed, during which I failed to convince her to have this investigation done. Finally, a doctor figured out what she had. She had a rare condition, possibly from trauma, but probably since birth, and her skull on this side wasn’t fully closed, her brain was protuding out of this opening, and the “tumour” was her brain compressing the nerves :eek: Her brain was indeed “leaking”.
She was told that it was fortunate she never had the surgery because otherwise there was a significant risk that her brain would have been damaged in the process :smack:
From this point of view at least, yes. She probably lived with this all her life without any consequence until her recent hearing loss (and there was no further evolution after that), there doesn’t seem to be any obvious way to fix this, nor any obvious need to fix it, in fact, especially given her age (she’s 91).
The most disgusting/discouraging part of my MRI was seeing just how much fat I have below my chin. I have body dysmorphia - I see myself as thinner than I really am - often shocked when I catch a glimpse of myself sideways walking past store windows and such. I never expected to get that same kind of hard reality check with a glimpse of my interior structures!
For now we’re meds (pain, neurontin, cox inhibitors) and rest, heat, ice, and phys therapy, massage, and so on if we can get the inflammation down. I can also get injections in a few weeks if I’m still in a lot of pain.
Two of my brothers had spine surgery and it didn’t turn out great, so my goal is to avoid invasive procedures at (almost) any cost.
I was a MRI/CT/X-ray tech for almost twenty years and assisted in lots of spinal surgeries as well, and I too have had a bulged disc (and 90%+ stenosis bilaterally) at L4/5. I tried the aforementioned treatments for awhile and the problem never went away. I eventually lost all feeling in both legs if I walked even 10-15’. Fusion and bilat laminectomies made me 100% - and I was walking pretty much pain-free less than an hour after the surgery(!) and went home next day
IMHO, go to a neuroligist and learn just how successful spinal surgeries are nowadays. Again, just my opinion - but if the disc(s) are bulging so much that spinal canal is barely visible from probable compression of disc-bulging…well, nothing but surgery will get your quality of life back (to be frank about it) Been there/done that, so to speak. Those discs will only worsen, ya know?
