Sadly no, most of my doctor’s seem to have ruled it out now and insurance won’t more than likely pay for a new CT Scan that will actually show the veins correctly as they botched the last scan.
@MPHDodgeDaytona - Would you be willing to convert the CT scan you had to 3D using radiantviewer.com (for PCs) or Bee Dicom Viewer App (for Macs) & posting some of your images here? Even if they aren’t great, we may be able to see something doctors are dismissing as normal which can give you more pointed information to discuss at a future appointment. You’d need to cover or delete any personal information in the pictures before posting them.
I’m sorry for your bleak social life. I can understand how distressing that would be especially since it’s something that is important to you. Getting your health back in order will help you gain self-confidence which will definitely help with your social life.
If you feel well enough, you can try finding a singles social group to participate in. I know they exist in some communities with groups that hike together, eat a meal together weekly, or do other outdoor/indoor activities that are “neutral” but allow the people to get to know each other. It would be worth looking into.
I sure would, it may take me a week or two but I can do that. I used to do lots of activities, but most outside of my age group. I have 2 classic cars I used to take to shows, but most people at these shows where my parents age. I have a motorcycle and took that to shows as well, but a few years ago it was sadily exposed to the elements even though indoors and covered (our garage/barn the soffit area on that side of the building had rotted away and caused the winter moisture to get inside) causing the rear half to rust. Lucikly I got all replacement parts, but due to my health the last few years I haven’t been able to work on repaing it. I bought an old 50’s tractor in plans to fix up, but don’t have the money to do much and it’s been sitting since COVID and again most people in that hobby are my parents age. I used to do photography, but my depression has got me down so much I haven’t had much interest lately, even though I still love it. I do have a flickr.com profile using the same username if any wants to check it out by the way. It’s not up-to-date as it’s been years since I’ve posted, but have photos to post if I ever can find the time and energy. Then just after COVID I got a kayak in hopes of one finding a group more my age and two to finally get some exercise I might enjoy. But even that went down hill, the first year I had to get warranty service on it due to a missing screw/bolt the size of a grain of rice and had to wait almost a month to get it. I tried to find a group to go out with, but couldn’t and I took it out a few more times that year by myself to test out all the features the kayak had. That screw/bolt was for a pedal system, unlike most kayaks where you use a paddle mine has one of the two versions of pedal drives. One pedal system is just like a bicycle and it goes down to a propeller like you have on a boat motor, but mine uses a pedal system that acts like a stair climber exercise machine and that connects to a fin like system that mimic fish fins to propel you forward and mine allows you to go in any 360⁰ direction and uses a gear system to change direction. The gear is held together with this screw/bolt and without the whole drive was useless. But not only can you pedal my kayak you can also still use the old fashioned paddles, but what is cooler is the sail you can add and make it into a mini sailboat with pedal power as well for extra speed. The next year I only took it out once as I was invited to my cousin’s wedding and for a special event I believe it was their honeymoon they invited most of us to kayak down a local river that their friends owned a rental canoe/kayak business on. So I was able to bring my kayak on the trip. It was fun, but never got invited again and the rest of the year I became busy with other family matters. So I never got to take it out again. Then the last two years it has been sitting due to my health getting worse then ever before. So yeah I hope I can find some answers to get my life rolling again and then hope to make it better by finally finding friends of my own and ones that are around my age that actually want to do something with me and possibly a relationship for once (no body ever calls or text me I’m basically a hermit).
I’m sorry that you’ve not met the special someone to share your life with, I had a tough time with that in my younger days, & joined all sorts of clubs to try & meet new people, not that it helped, like you I seemed to be mixing with an older age group…Obviously your health isn’t great atm but is there any voluntary work you could do to meet others? Otherwise have you considered going to a local Church, for friendship? Hopefully you’d get a warm welcome at least, and be able to connect with others even if it doesn’t lead to romance…
Sending you a hug ![]()
Sadly living in a rural area doesn’t bode much. Again most volunteer work around here is helping elder seniors, so again out of my age group and most volunteers won’t work together with or ever meet with other volunteers. Then as for church groups, I’m atheist even though that doesn’t matter, I live in a family that believes and my motherwas raised Catholic. But we haven’t been to church since I was about 6-7 years old as most churches around us tried to dictate how we lived our lives and said they were the ones that got to judge people. My mother got pissed at that and said only God can judge us not the pastors or preachers and their followers. Not only this church always creeped me out, they preached stuff that rubbed me the wrong way. Most of the church groups here preach conspiracies or are for sure cults in my opnion. I don’t mind learning about religions and celebrating with others their traditions, just don’t try to convine me to join or participate in something I know is wrong. I also don’t mind going to celebrate a wedding, honor someone at their funeral, or help out a friend or family members with their journeys, but that is where I draw the line with religions. Next sadly most groups that I probably actually could join that seem inviting are all a 2 hours drive away in major metroplolitan areas only. The next problem is everytime I do find something or someone I get turned off by their practices or they disappear with no answer. Just an example, I know this one was when I was in college, but aways seems to go a simliar way. There was a girl that told everyone in an assembly that she was going to start a history club and I thought that was great, I love history and I’d be able to meet people while joining. She told everyone where to meetup for the first meeting and how to contact her for questions. First red flag was, I went to the supposed first meeting at a local coffee shop (local to my college, as I commuted daily 30 miles away) and waited an hour for anyone to show up. I was the only one; she didn’t even show up. So I called her with the number she gave us and she told me she totally forgot and that she was still in her apartment. She at least invited me over to discuss what she had planned and offer me breakfast for being a no show. Well she finally got some more people to join and we had about 2-3 meetings to get the club started before the end of the year. Second red flag was when we were supposed to get together during the summer break and I never heard a word. Come a month before classes started up and no replies to the few emails I sent to the leader, I reached out to the others within the group to find out what was going on. Come to find out they had meetings all summer long without informing me and the leader had moved to the Florida Campus (it’s no longer part of my college’s assets, but was at the time). That right there told me they didn’t care about me and about a year later the club failed to stay alive. This happens to me all the time I find a good thing and then something happens and I’m left alone again. I can only take so much of this before it breaks all my hopes, which is almost at my wits end already.
I truely want to Thank You all though for the words of kindness and sorry for all the long rants, but when I can talk to someone I do as I’m just so deprived of social interaction. I’m lucky to talk with just 1 person other than my parents or customer service/admistrative service people when need be about once every 3-4 months.
@MPHDodgeDaytona - Please feel free to talk to us as you have need. We’re here for you. I’m sorry we haven’t offered useful options to help you. I try to live by “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” - even if failure has been the previous end to trying. Keep trying as there will be a positive outcome at some point. I understand about getting discouraged though. That discouragement makes “trying again” more tentative & difficult.
Living in the country does make it more challenging to engage in social opportunities. Getting your health restored would make such a difference as you would be able to get a job away from home, & that, by default, would give you a social life of sorts. I hope your journey to recovering your health progresses over the next year. ![]()
I’m sorry that the Churches haven’t worked out either, & volunteering doesn’t sound like it would work for you either, you are in a difficult situation!
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Hi Jules and Isaiah_40_31 again,
Sorry it took me so long to write back, I’ve been dealing with so many life problems. I’ve been having to call many companies to get warranty work done on household products and one has been a headache and sadly I probably will have to go through the warranty process again as the replacement unit has the same problem, if I don’t go to small claims court/my Attorney General first. I may even try to contact their CEO’s Office and try to get if fixed with them. Anyway, that has taken up most of my time and energy while I was gone. I just got some images from the RadiAnt Viewer and just like @TML said you can only see my internal structures from my Scan in 2019, for some reason the contrast must have not been enough for the Scan in Oct. 2025 to show up. I will post them down below for you all but want to update you on some of my symptoms I’ve had since I last posted. The first symptom I have had is I’ve started to develop what I believe is the classic sore neck/jabbing pain. It has been very subtle compared to what most on here have seemed to endure, but for me it started one day just out of the blue when I went to lay down. I had just laid my head down and felt a sharp pain shoot down from my right jaw about where the Styloid Process is down to my thyroid on the right side. It luckily then continued to only hurt minorly when I would swallow, mostly felt like a mild sore throat/bruise and by the next day it was gone. I’ve had 2 other occasions when my neck has hurt in the same place since for a total of 3 times now, but they always come out of nowhere and luckily, they don’t hurt more than about a mild sore throat/bruise. But I’ve never had this in the past ever. The next thing, finally my headaches that I was getting weekly have since and vanished except for one day last week and some over-the-counter NSAID’s took it right way. Also, my hairs in my ears seemed to finally clear out of my right ear, but there still are some in my left, but they aren’t irritating me that much (other than the one surprising cat hair that had somehow found its way in there earlier this week). I could hear and feel something rubbing on my eardrum and a quick look with the otoscope confirmed it. I was able to use the otoscope and get it out without going to the doctor though. Finally, my GERD/Gastroparesis has been coming back again as well. This time I was feeling my Lymph Nodes just under my Jaw (the ones between the jaw and the Styloid Process) as at the same time my neck was hurting as well (one of the 2 other times out of the 3) and even though they have been inflamed and large in the past they were both sore, but my right one was larger that night. Anyway, I have a relative that was telling us about lymph node draining just a little while ago and even though I didn’t take them up on the offer, I thought well what if I could just kind of massage the lymph nodes myself. While since the right one was the one causing the neck pain and was larger, I started there. While massaging it I found if I pushed it forward towards my teeth, my GERD/Gastroparesis seemed to go right away as well as the neck pain and if I stopped massaging it within 5 minutes they both would come right back. I wonder if this could be a cause of Eagle Syndrome symptoms as my Lymph Nodes are pressing up against my vagus nerve and other internal structures like the arteries and such. Anyway, here are the screenshots I could get and if you need more let me know. I’ll see what I can do to get them if I can, but I’m not sure though as my scans are very limited compared to many I’ve seen on here.
I’m not sure that we can add in anything new, or spot anything different from your other images, but I’ll summarise again: it’s a bit strange as neither side styloids look like they’re attached, or whether these are pieces of calcified ligaments & you don’t have styloids… On the left side it looks like there is a bit of compression on the IJV between the C1 process and the styloid, the IJV looks quite flattened compared to the right side. There’s no obvious collateral veins though which we often see if there’s significant compression. The vagus nerve is close to the IJV where it exits the skull, so you could well be right about having compression / irritation of that nerve. Obviously we can’t see the lymph nodes so can’t see if they’re adding to irritation in the area, but it is common with ES to have enlarged nodes, and if you’ve found with massage that the symptoms resolve or change then that seems fairly likely. (Dr Hepworth when he removes the styloids often removes some lymph nodes in the area too).
Your neck looks pretty straight too, we see that alot of here, there are exercises you can to to improve it’s natural curve, so that might improve things for you, here’s a link:
List of my favourite resources on YouTube to learn anatomy - General - Living with Eagle
I agree with everything @Jules has told you, @MPHDodgeDaytona. I annotated one of the images you just posted to show you what I see. It looks to me like you don’t have styloids so the calcifications are from sections of your stylohyoid ligaments calcifying.
This is exactly what I thought when I saw the 3D Images at first. The left IJV is compressed or flattened, but by what I’m not sure as the other structures aren’t touching it and what we though were my Styloid Processes are actual calcifications of the ligaments. Even though I couldn’t get the Structures to show up from my scan in Oct. 2025 I did notice that the Calcifications are bigger then this images from 2019 and look like they are now forming into what actually look like a styloid (faint but they are connecting to the base of the skull now I’ll try to get screenshot later of these updates from Oct. 2025). So I think I have styloids, but they are so small they got confused for the calcifications and just now are calcifing directly onto my tiny styloids. This is now making everything inside more rigid and causing my symptoms to worsen. I’m more worried though I can’t see the Carotid Artery and its shape whether it’s compressed or not. Anyway thanks to the both of you for confirming what I saw.
The flattening of the IJV can also be caused by muscle, ligament, nerve, other vascular tissue, scar, or lymph node contact w/ the IJV. Those things don’t show up in CT scans so we have to guess based on the location of the compression what else might be involved if the IJV/C1 aren’t obviously in contact w/ the IJV or the compression is below that area. The posterior digastric muscle can also be involved in compression & sometimes needs removal to aid in the decompression.








