06 Symptoms, solutions and serious situations

Towards the end of September 2021, I had my appointment in orthopaedic triage at my local hospital. That morning I had been rushing about and was particularly unsteady on my feet and my left leg felt heavy and like jelly at the same time. By now I was also experiencing increased difficultly with walking and pain in my left arm and shoulder and the left side of my neck. The practitioner spent considerable time assessing my condition and then made a referral for an MRI scan of my entire spine. This was scheduled for early October.

In the meantime, I contracted Covid and found that my symptoms became temporarily worse. Perimenopause was adding to the various symptoms I was already experiencing. It was becoming so difficult to work out which condition was causing which symptoms. This was the prompt I needed to return to the migraine elimination diet, which involved meticulously avoiding foods containing milk, citrus and flavourings which are major triggers for me. If I could eliminate some of the symptoms, that would surely help. This improved the dizziness, vertigo and cognition issues to some degree but not fully. However, it was clear that having silent migraines did make the overall symptoms worse.

On Tuesday the 26th of October 2021, I received my diagnosis from the Musculo-skeletal practitioner by telephone. I carefully noted what she was saying into my phone. She said I had spinal stenosis myelopathy which was narrowing of the spinal column at the 6th and 7th vertebrae in my neck, as well as some bulging disks. There was significant deterioration of many vertebrae, with osteophytes. These are bony spurs growing on the inside of the vertebrae, causing the spinal column to become narrow. (You will find a glossary of medical terms, numbered 00 in my blog list).

There was indication of loss of spinal fluid in my neck and signal interruption because the spinal cord was actually squashed. This meant that nerve signals were not travelling along my spinal cord properly. It explained the problems I was experiencing with my left arm and the little, ring and middle fingers and was also adding to the problems I had with my legs.

There was also disk bulges in my thoracic spine in the middle of my back at the 10th and 11th vertebrae and stenosis which is the narrowing of the spinal column due to those bony spurs. This was contributing to the issues with my legs as well. The practitioner had emailed a referral to King’s College Hospital in London and explained to me that they would review my case and quite possibly decide to carry out a fusion operation which involved removing discs and attaching titanium plates and screws to the vertebrae to decompress the spinal column. However, there was no guarantee that this would reverse the symptoms. Any surgery was mainly to stop the condition worsening and leading to paralysis.

Having delivered all this information to me, she could tell that I was quite upset and she asked how I felt. It was a lot to take in but I was thankful it was not MS or a tumour. At some point towards the end of our conversation I told her that I was a Christian and I believed that God would help me through this regardless of what happened and that I trusted that he would always be with me.

After hanging up, I was very upset and tearful. So I prayed. My husband, Geof was working in London that day and it was also my father in law’s 93rd birthday and we were due to go round there that evening. The father of a close friend had died and the funeral was in a couple of days and Geof was going to be leading worship. Knowing that Geof had a lot on his plate, I resolved to tell him at the weekend once that was all over.

However, I recognised that I needed support and prayer, so I called the church office and spoke to one of the church prayer team. She prayed for me and encouraged me and suggested that I soak in worship music. I told her that whatever happened and wherever this would lead, I wanted every moment of this journey to honour God and glorify him and for his work to be completed through it. I knew this was an opportunity to test my trust in God for strength and courage in this season and trust in him for healing without surgery. I didn’t speak to anyone else and resisted the temptation to Google the condition.

That night after returning from my father in law’s house, I knew I would not be able to keep this diagnosis from my husband until the weekend, so I shared with him what the medical practitioner had reported to me. Naturally, he was very concerned, but despite my protestations, Geof Googled the condition which mentioned various types of paralysis. We talked for a while and prayed before going to bed.

Unusually for me, I had complete peace about it that God was fully in control. Geof however, did not have such a good night’s sleep.