Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Botox in my neck?? For Parkinson's?? Yep.  Got it today.  From behind (above the waist, of course) I have the back-of-the-neck of a 25 year old!  Anyway --

I have cervical dystonia.  The muscles in my neck, particularly on the left side, are really tight and they hurt.  My doctor very kindly gave me this explanation about cervical distonia and Botox:

"it partially and temporarily blocks the nerve from communicating with the muscle so that the muscle does not contract as strongly each time the nerve fires.  The problem in dystonia is not the nerve but actually the brain sending too strong of a signal for the muscle to contract.  But this is our best treatment to interrupt that “too strong of a signal” from reaching the muscle and causing the muscle spasm which we refer to as a “dystonia”.

It takes about a week to work and it lasts for @ 3 months.  Pain free -- woo hoo!  I took this very lame picture of the syringe of Botox!

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