Question
Honda Integra Smash
Dear Dr.Blom,
I am a 67-year-old male with a history of hypertension. In 1991 I was a race seat passenger in a Honda Integra car that t-boned a Toyota hi Lux truck. The damage was very extensive and being a rear seat passenger I stopped a 50 k bin of frozen fish from coming through into the car. The impact of the bin on the back of my seat was that it made it quite bowed. I have since that time suffered with my lumbar spine area but have learned to live with it.
In June this year while working at our outdoor ice rink I slipped and fell quite heavily while pulling a hose out onto the ice and hit the back of my head quite hard. A fortnight later saw me at my optometrist to get my eyes checked as I was starting to get a small amount of peripheral double vision when I looked hard to the right. He agreed that there was a discrepancy there but could not put his finger on why. Two weeks later we were away on a world trip six weeks into which I developed quite a bad case of double vision caused by my right eye not working the way it should. I went to an optometrist in Scotland who told me that possibly two of the inner muscles of the eye had stopped working and that I should go to a hospital to have a good checkup. I did this a week later and saw a fifth year graduate who gave me a really good check over. I asked her why I had this double vision and she had said to me it is normally caused by head trauma, I then told her of my past accident and of the recent fall on the ice, she thought that it could be consistent with these accidents and that the cervical area may well have been damaged through whiplash. I then went to see her immediate doctor who had a look into my eyes and confirmed that they were both seeing good but that the right eye was not tracking good. He took my blood pressure which was at the time 160/90 and said that it was high and that I probably suffered a mini stroke. I did not think that this was consistent with the slow deterioration over six weeks of my eye.
Now I digress a little, two years ago I started to notice numbness in my right eyebrow close to my nose side, I went to see my doctor at the time about this and have attended a specialist as well. In the last year and a half this numbness has spread to encompass my right hand side forehead and has made the eye lids and my right eye totally numb to the touch. Two weeks ago I started to notice loss of sensation in the top part of my cheek under my right eye, since then the numbness has spread to encompass the right-hand side of my nose, all of the cheek area and the inside top palate of my mouth.
I have since all of this has happened learnt about the three nerves that control this area. It is all just sort of in the same area and to me it is too close to home not to be related in this I mean the double vision and the numbness. I bit of reading on the web recently has shown me that the cervical area at the base of the skull if damaged can put pressure on the nerve stem and can have different happenings around your head.
The last bit of numbness encompassing my nose, cheek and inside mouth took a little less than a fortnight. I am seeing the doctor about this again tomorrow. I did see him when we got back from our holiday three weeks ago and gave him the letter given to me by the doctor in Scotland. He agreed with the doctor's decision from Scotland that I may have had a mini stroke. I don't think I have, I could be wrong but I don't think so. At the time of seeing my doctor he decided to change my blood pressure pills from atenolol to losartin. I am still getting used to these.
Sorry that this is all a bit jumbled but I just wrote it as thoughts came into my head about this. I have had an MRI scan on my head to check for whatever and a CAT scan. I was told by another doctor that if they were not looking at the cervical area they would not notice any untoward damage, I had my back -- lower lumbar x-rayed a few years back and was told that it was just age related -- quite an easy answer to my problems I guess. I still think the bin of fish may have caused a bit of a problem there.
My main worry at this time is the double vision that I've got the time it took to fruition 6 to 8 weeks, and it is still getting steadily worse. I am able to position my head in a frowning position looking up through the top left corner of my eyes and at this attitude I am able to see normally. Once I left my head up slightly, or move my head to the left the double vision comes back with a vengeance.
One does not realize what it is like to have stereo vision until you are down to just monovision with one eye. Would you think it the right thing for me to do in persuing damage to the cervical area of my spine to look for damage there?
Thank you for your time and if you could throw a bit of a light on what your thoughts are to me I would be appreciative of this.
Regards, Allan.
AnswerFirst of all I think you have come to the right conclusion that your problem is in the upper neck. You have had some serious traumas that can cause one or both of the upper neck bones to misalign squeezing down on your lower brainstem and upper spinal cord. A misalignment of one of the top two neck bones can also restrict blood flow in the brainstem area which can cause many of the symptoms you are describing.
There is a pattern to your symptoms and they are all related to your cranial nerves which come off of the brainstem. So a misalignment of one of the top neck bones squeezing down on your brain stem restricting blood flow and communication between the brain and the body can do just that.
Your next step is to get an evaluation from an Upper Cervical Chiropractor. They can examine your upper neck and tell you definitively if you do have a misalignment of one of the top two neck bones as I explained above. You may have to travel to find an Upper Cervical Chiropractor.
