I haven't been on this board for probably a year, but that's because my condition has improved immensely. I am feeling very gratetful for this, so I've come back to tell you my story. Perhaps it will help you too.

I have a relatively large C5-C6 disc herniation that brushes against the spinal cord, and pretty significant arthritis and bone spurring throughout my neck, plus an old fracture at T10-11, and disc dehydration all along the thoracic spine. I am 39.

The big problem was my neck, though. I woke up one day with a severe stiff neck, then went for a massage where the guy yanked my neck this way and that, and the next thing I knew I was told I needed surgery. I had tingling in my arms and legs, numbness in my pinkies, and a terrible burning sensation in my elbows, and under my arms.

I lay in bed for the better part of a month (big mistake!) on the advise of the surgeon's nurse, which made my mid back hurt like heck as well.

I tried various physical therapies, and was heading of to my pre-op for an ACDF when my PT told me about trigger point massage therapy. She whipped out a book that was about 4 inches thick, and showed me the page that perfectly represented the areas where I felt pain. The book, which was written by Travelle (or something like that) called them pain pathways.

For the next 6 months, a massage therapist and my PT massaged points in what to me were wierd places, like deep in my armpits, in my pecs, underneath my collarbone, and between my back ribs. I cried through most of it b/c it was very painful.

But, as time went on, the burning went away. The tingling went away. I could turn my neck. I started walking and strengthening all the muscles that had atrophied while I lay in bed. I learned everything I could about trigger points, neck muscles, and how and where they connected to bones. In layman's terms, as I understand it, a trigger point is the midway point on a muscle where a spasm is most likely to occur. When it is pressed or stroked in a certain way it releases, lengthening the muscle. When it is knotted up, the muscle is too short, and it pulls on our joints (the spine is a series of joints), and this actually pulls them out of allignment. Everything swells, and so the numbness and burning was actually caused by the inflammation, not the herniation itself. In fact, it was probably the muscle spasm that caused the herniation.

The only proof I have of all this is that I still have the herniation, but no pain. Well, not never pain, but nothing on the scale I had before. And when I stroke the pressure points with a theracane, and practice release meditation, the pain goes away. Pretty much completely.

Now, having said all that, there may very well be a time when I will need surgery. But not today.

So, I highly recommend seeing if you can find someone in your area to try this. I also got a new, very soft bed, and that gave me a LOT of relief as well. Seems that the hard bed was making my muscles tense up even more and that was causing more inflammation and, actually numbness when the inflammation become enough.

One last bit of info, if you have a C5-C6 hernation, the numbness would be in your thumb, not your pinkie, if it was nerve root impingement. The fact that it was my pinkie suggested that there was something else going on.

I hope so much that this info helps someone else.