On the road again

“I had a throbbing, aching pain in my arm all the time,” Conmy said.

His fingertips had been numb for about a year, and he had trouble holding up the motorcycle and keeping his hands on the handlebars.

He had three pinched nerves and bone spurs in his neck caused by an old heavy lifting injury from a previous job.

When Thomas Spagnolia, MD, a Sanford Health neurosurgeon, told Conmy bone spurs were pressing on his nerves and spinal cord, he gave up motorcycling and jet skiing, “for fear of falling off and cracking my neck.”

“The more levels you fuse, the greater the problem,” Dr. Spagnolia said. “They’ll do well five to 10 years and then develop problems and have to have another fusion.”

Artificial disks have been around for four or five years, Dr. Spagnolia said, and the operation is done through the front of the neck, so the surgeon doesn’t have to go through major muscle groups.

He said people who do repetitive or unnatural neck movements at work, such as people who work on assembly lines, are prone to the kind of spinal cord compression Conmy suffered.