The 3D CT scans are amazing aren’t they, they are certainly a great aid to diagnosis.
My main concern was surviving! With regard to neck muscles supposedly weakening when wearing a collar long term, I can say that in my experience (bearing in mind that I’ve worn this Philadelphia, so called ‘hard’ collar, 24/7 for nearly 10 years) I can say without a doubt that nothing is further from the truth. I remove it daily to either wash, shower or bathe and find I have good strong function of my neck muscles, I can easily hold my head firm without any difficulty or pain and, other than some rotation restriction I had as a result of the fall, can move my head easily in any direction.
Even within the collar you are still using many, if not all of your neck muscles, just not to the extremes you would use them otherwise. The collar will stop you from carrying out any sharp or compromising movement and, during times of sleep (when your muscles would normally relax anyway, leaving the integrity of your neck to your ligaments) you’ll find that they are protected from over-stretching too.
As long as you don’t ‘slouch’ in your collar, it will help maintain your head in good relationship to your spinal column and, aid the free flowing of your cerebro-spinal fluid between the two structures, this flow otherwise can become compromised, thus building up intracranial pressure and, thus either raising your blood pressure, or heartrate – as I said before, as your body tries to get oxygenated blood into your brain area.
Yes, I did suffer fractures and subluxations as well as CCI – all missed – as many are, if you do a google search, you’ll see the percentage missed is quite high! It’s been quite a struggle getting to the truth, I have to admit but, once you know what you are dealing with you can manage it a lot more effectively. It didn’t help that they put the wrong name on my x-ray and failed to give me a CT scan at the time.
The metal body brace I use, in addition to the Philadelphia collar at night, is called a ‘Johnson CTO’.
Having looked at a couple of your CT scan videos, I can clearly see what looks like an ‘Atlantoaxial Rotary Subluxation’