How it came to this

I've been having neck pains since the early 2000's. At first it was very rare, and when I would get up and move they'd go away. Over time they came back more and more often and got more and more bothersome. I saw a couple doctors over a couple of years who were convinced I had a neck sprain that just needed heat and rest. I did as they said, but it didn't help. X-Rays didn't see anything (my joke to Cheree was that I needed a neck transplant). It got to the point where it started interfering with my comfort in everyday activities like work, gym, baseball and even just walking around. I went to 4 massage therapy sessions that did seem to make it feel better, but the cost of those sessions adds up quickly - and it wasn't really fixing the problem.

Late last year I started seeing a chiro-practor who took some pretty blurry X-Rays and told me it was my alignment or something that was out of whack and that a steady diet of "neck adjustments" would get me back in shape. Those bone popping experiences did give me some stories to tell, but not much relief.

In December I started noticing that my hands were feeling water temperatures differently than the rest of my body. The chiro didn't think much of it "All part of the process." I never did ask him if he had seen the Simpsons Chiro episode "Forget it Homer, it's Chiro-town."
Anyways, I stopped seeing him soon after that. In March I started noticing numbness in my hands. This freaked me out and lead to a visit to the Dr, who performed an EKG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocardiogram and blood tests which didn't find anything wrong and thus lead to a referral to an Ortho who decided I have Carpal Tunnell Syndrome. I think I'm a victim of my profession with the medical world. Anytime anyone with a medical degree hears I work on computers, my work gets blamed for what ails me.

I got fitted for a pair of Carpal Tunnel braces and a couple prescriptions and was told to check back in a month. After about a week and feeling numbness spread to my feet, stomach and back I asked for a recommendation to a neurologist. The neurologist performed an EMG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromyography which was both unpleasant and uninformative. It did rule out Carpal Tunnell, but that was the end of it's help. So that lead to yesterday's MRI's (one for the brain and one for the neck) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRI. By this time I was freaked out. I was sure I had MS (my sister the Dr. told me it's bad to plug in your symptoms online, the worst stuff always comes back) and was just waiting to hear it from the Dr. My neurologist called me in the afternoon and told me that my neck MRI showed a tumor up against my spinal cord. Yes, hearing about your spinal cord is scary, but still a relief from hearing about worse conditions. My neurologist got me an appointment this morning with his top choice for neurosurgeon. Cheree and I went in for the appointment and were told that yes, the tumor is pushing my spinal cord and it needs to come out. They're almost positive it's benign. We'll know for sure after the surgery. The surgery will be pretty intense. Ir will be about 6 hours. It will involve a blood transfusion (thank you whoever is the donator). Hopefully they'll finish everything in 1 shot. They might have to do some reconstruction for bone that has been eroded by the tumor. The way it's been explained to me, I'll feel like I got kicked in the back of the head by a mule. I'll be in Intensive Care for 3-5 days and then home in bed for a couple weeks and then we'll see how I recover. I'll be in a neck brace for a while.

I feel bad Cheree. Once again she'll have to drop me off at the hospital and spend hours worrying about me. She'll have to help me after I get home for a while. She'll have to put up with Angry Paul when I'm hurting and no matter what Simpsons episode she puts on for me, it won't be the right one.

So now I'll be on roids (new prescription) for a couple weeks until my surgery, it's a shame I won't be playing ball - I haven't knocked a dinger in a while.