I started this thread for help to cope but did not tell my story...
It started about three years ago. I was dancing and at the top of my game still. I had gone to doctors for years telling them about a severe pain in my neck. Because I was a headliner and I was in perfect shape, they examined me and let me go, telling me to take Motrin in large amounts but it had stopped working years earlier.
Finally, I fell while dancing and landed on that place in my neck...
It took me three DX's to finally talk a doctor into giving me and MRI on the area. During this time I was loosing what I can call my "life force," or everything was shutting down. I was unable to walk more and more, breathing was hard,and my pain increased to me lying on the floor and sobbing at times. I was ready to let it all go.

The MRI revealed long term stenosis which was severe enough to be affecting my spinal cord and my nerves. I was told to put on a hard brace and not to leave my home until surgery. The doctor who had put off an MRI called me with the results and was crying and apoligizing. I put him on speaker so my husband could here what the MRI revealed as well.
It became a game of "save the dancer." I got the best surgeon in the city because there was an article done about my case and asking doctors to "step up to the plate and help _____________." One did and I had my surgery. I had my spinal cord freed and I was given metal in my neck.
I am alergic to metal which I told this surgeon when he proposed the sugery. I do not have pierced ears and cannot wear a wedding ring even if it is platinum. Still, he had but in Titanium and said no one was allergic to it.
Soon my body started to reject the metal and I became very, very ill. I was medicated with Fentenal patches for the extreme pain they said I would be left with. After awhile, the metal started to buckle in my neck and I was home, on floors, dragging myself about and nodding in and out of knowing what was going on. My internist tried more pain relief but I told them I was dying and I knew it.
Finally, after some months, the surgeon had another article appear about my plight. His rep was on the line and he called me in for another MRI.
My next surgery to remove the metal was the next day in the early AM. He removed the metal and my neck stopped collapsing. I stopped dying but I was very week from the two major surgeries. I am 5'8" and I weighed about 100lbs. I could not hold food down and I was reacting badly to the patches. I went to the specialist that everyone said was the definative word on what happened to me and he told me that "they did surgery soon enough to save your life, but not your arm, or your pain." What had happened is that my spinal cord had been compromised and I had a deficit forever in my left arm. It was weak and would stay so.

A couple months after this surgery, I had an infection. It turned out to be a gland in my neck that might have been injured during the long surgeries on my neck. I was told it had to be removed so I prepared to have yet another doctor cut my throat. It had been about 14 months so far, and I had two surgeries already so I had not recovered.
I had that gland out as I was disappearing and trying to learn to control my new Chronic pain.
Four months later I had another infection in the same place. I learned after another MRI that the gland had only partially been removed.
I went in for another surgeon to cut my throat and take the REST of the gland out. By this time the scar tissue on my neck was a real problem. I had one of the best surgeons in the city do it and what was a 45 min. operation took 4 hours as he peeled back my skin's layers and avoided the nerves to my smile, my vocal cords, etc...

And so I was left to learn to control the extreme pain and to heal. The months between surgeries I drifted in and out. Although they wanted to hospitalize me I decided to stay at home because according to them, I was fine after the first surgery! I drifted in and out as my family moved about me scared to death and started to talk away from me and whisper. I was alone by that time facing my body feeling like it was dying with no explanation to take to my family or a doctor.
It took my husband hitting rage to get me in to have the second MRI that saved my life. I would have been left there on floors and in beds to let my spinal cord collapse at the neck level.

It has been a little over a year since this happened. I am now dancing some and trying to heal. My emotions have not yet settled but I am trying. I felt rage, very depressed, sad, alone for the first time since I was on stage all of my life, I felt helpless.
I know I do not hold back now, not ever. I do not know what I will be like when the whole thing settles in my mind and for that matter, my body.

This is why I asked the question. I spent a long time in between life and death as my spinal cord took damage. Many things changed inside me. I'm not done though.

I thank you all for answering my question and all of you helped me so very much. I know it was a hard subject but you stood up and answered it like the strong women you are. You've no idea how much your answers have helped me. I am just so grateful.

I didn't think my story was all that interesting and I didn't want to lay it all out and focus on me. I guess I should have told it earlier.

Thank you for reading.I'm sorry for the typos and for the grammar mistakes. I am severly dyslexic and was exhausted after writing this so did not re-read it.

dancer9