Simon
According to my most recent MRI my spinal cord is steadtly thinning at the injury site, c4-c5. Doctor has no explanation. Have you or anyone else heard of such a thing?

Hi Cheri,

I was just checking some older posts and noticed yours. My husband is C5,6,7 incomplete and 10 years after his injury we was able to get an MRI at a facility in Florida. This was his first MRI he was able to obtain b/c he has so much wire in his neck from 2 bone fusions, he was always told an MRI was impossible because of the metal intefering with the magnets and not being able to see a clear image.

Anyway, we have his MRI results and you can clearly see his brain stem has atrophied, but the doctor who was supposed to give us a full report, never did so. The doctors associate just told us this tends to happen with SCI. You just gave me an idea to Google it and see if I can find any info on this. I've never heard of atrophy of the spinal cord, but could be the same reason. If I find anything, I'll get back with you.

Take care,

Hapa

hi hapa. just out of curiosity what were the benefits of the bone fusion? also, how does he handle pain and spasms? my neuro doesn't seem too eager to do the fusion. he says eventually i'll lose everything. does your hubby get any physio? we're supposed to call my neuro back and let him know our decision and any input would be helpful. thank you,

Hi Cheri,

Mr. Hapa broke his neck 1985 in a diving accident and shattered C5 into a gozillion pieces, C6 & C7 into some pieces too. So the doctors took a small sliver of hip bone off his left hip (barely see a scar) and went through the front of his neck (can't see that scar) and took a very small 5" piece of wire to loop around the sliver of hip bone and C5,6 & 7. Of course, he was in a halo after the operation.

A couple of weeks later 2 nurses (1 small female and 1 large male) came in the middle of the night to hike hubby up the bed. One overcompensated and the other undercompensated and slammed hubby's head against the wall. He felt the nurse brush drywall out of his hair and also felt that feeling like you bumped your funnybone and they immediately took him down for an x-ray and all that.

The doctor came in and told him he would need to do another bone fusion. By the time Mr. Hapa was allowed to call his father (I wasn't around then), the wall in the room had been patched and there was a smell of fresh paint in the air. HMMMMM.

The next operation the doctor must have been in a hurry, b/c he did it while hubby was face down, took bone off the back of the right hip, left a huge 8 " long Frankensteinish scar above the hip and a very ugly wide scar down the back of his neck.

Since then other doctors have looked at Mr. Hapa's xrays and wondered why there is so much bone and wire in his neck. It's because the doctors most likely had a tee time and just slapped Mr. Hapa together with too much bone and wire terribly wrapped around his spine.

I don't believe a bone fusion is necessary unless you've completely shattered parts of your spine. A guy I used to take care of broke C5, but just wore a halo and it healed w/o bone fusion.

I don't quite understand what your doctor is referring to when saying you'll eventually lose everything. I know there is a misconception about bone fusions that you won't be able to move your head like you used to, but after all the crap Mr. Hapa has in his neck he moves his head and neck around just as much as he used to.

What exactly is your injury and what does the doctor propose to do? If this is too personal, feel free to PM me.

Take care,
Hapa

Hi Cheri,

You can read this article regarding spinal cord atrophy, it has quite a bit of information in it:

http://bjr.birjournals.org/cgi/content/full/76/905/347

Hope it helps, make sure your doctor is reading the MRI results correctly as explained in the article.

Regards

Simon

thankyou for the info simon. it gave me alot of good information. i certainly will use it to determine my next move.