Edit- I think I accidentally moved your cervical vertebrae up a step in each one (Labeled C2=C1, C3=C2, so forth).
Good news is your processes are Very prominent and you show no obvious signs of arthritis in your neck!
Wow! How do you know so much about the neck? Are you doctor of some sort? Lol!! Well that’s good I don’t have signs of arthritis etc! I just turned 30 that would be very young for that. What does that mean my process are very prominent? I wish I was some sort of doctor then I probably wouldn’t be suffering too hell with this terrible pain! With the last picture you posted of my neck do you see the artery kind of squished by my vertebra? Or is that just what it looks like and it’s not the case? Because you can see how it’s pushed by the back of my neck vertebra. I just hope I don’t have another problem again lol. I’m dealing with this eagles syndrome is hard enough I don’t want other problems of my neck.
SnappleofDiscord said:
Edit- I think I accidentally moved your cervical vertebrae up a step in each one (Labeled C2=C1, C3=C2, so forth).
Good news is your processes are Very prominent and you show no obvious signs of arthritis in your neck!
Oh and blue haze you said indicates a different type of issue? Lol what does that mean? How would you know? Because believe it or not my pain started behind my thyroid cartilage and on top of my cartilage. I’m still suffering from pain on my thyroid cartilage some days it’s worse than my eagles syndrome but maybe that’s all related? Nerves?
Kelx- Haha, thanks lady. Im no where near a doctor or radiologist, but I’ve had (wanted to) learn to self advocate. I was a bioscience major, and do a lot of anatomy stuff for my work. When I got sick I had my radiology tech friend give me a crash course in reading MRIs and films, then wound up taking some online courses about it! (I can link you to some good film lectures if you’re feeling nerdy). I ask A Lot of questions about my films when I see drs too.
It’s been a big help since things can get missed in your images, especially with an unusual problem. When looking for horses, people can ignore the zebras. (My calcification shows up on some old images, but the radiologist was only evaluating my cervical spine! My lost doctor saw my styloid but missed my hyoid.)
So brushing up on some anatomy charts could really serve you well as you continue to fight to get some help. Especially since you’re still fighting to find a doctor who knows what They are looking at.
Alright, I hope you’re ready for a big nerd rant to try and answer your questions!
By you processes looking good, that’s the sharp pokey bits on your vertebrae, And the space between the base of your skull and first vertebrae seems nice and wide. Degradation in these can be an indicator of arthritis, which is super common, and can squish the nerves as the disks collapse or the bones develop weird wear patterns.
But that was just an aside since I mislabeled, I think the bigger focus in your neck is probably the two tiger claws growing out the base of your skull hahaha.
It Is possible that your styloid is squishing or pushing around some vasculature, it certainly is long enough to span across them. I don’t know enough about vasculature imaging to even make a guess based on this picture tho. I do know the carotid has some bulges and such that are Supposed to be there. My doc says sometimes it’s hard to tell how involved these overlapping structure are, and sometimes they check for the stenosis squishing by watching how a contrast dye flows through your neck in a CT scan.
If you mean the vasculature that looks super wiggley in the far right, kind of like spaghetti in your vertebrae, they’re usually super wiggley kind of veins.
The programs that make 3d images from medical scans can assign certain color codes to specific input volumes in the images. Bone is one specific volume, so it assigned a bone color to differentiate it from veins and arteries which are another color. Certain filters can also be set to highlight and visualize only the relevant structures. Like in you scans, the ct images pick up pretty much everything in your neck, but the docs don’t care about the trachea they want to see the bones and veins.
So the blue haze is a color assigned to a different kind of tissue that’s not bone or vasculature, and it is probably more clearly visible under other filters or settings. The more I look at it, the glad itself isn’t captured, and the blue is probably mostly cartilage or protective fatty structures. The gland itself is much lower.
Whew. Finally, the pain around your thyroid may make sense with your crazy styloids. The stylohyoid muscle connects your extra long styloids to your hyoid bone, which you can see in the photos Jules sent, are pretty intimately involved. It makes sense to me there could be referred pain or pain caused by the disrupted and altered movement of your hyoid in this area.
This is still weird, and concerning, and is definitely something not to be brushed off. The thyroid is serious business.
I hope this helps out some, and you start hearing back from doctors who can work with you!
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