Keeping Diane's head on! #savemountaindi

THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY FUNDRAISING PAGE! - - - MY STORY I was a hard-working and very active professional until I injured my neck in March 2020, which led to chronic pain. I manage my symptoms by lying completely flat, and since May 2020, I have been bedbound or housebound. For 6 months, I was head on pillow 24 hours a day. With some conservative treatment starting in October 2020, I had a few months where I was able to be upright for over 2 hours a day, but I have since deteriorated and now can leave the bed for a maximum of about half an hour total a day. - - - MY JOURNEY TO DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT PLAN - - After multiple hospitalisations where I was refused even diagnostics by the NHS due to Covid, I went to Freiburg, Germany and Duke, in the US, to look for and treat a suspected cerebrospinal fluid leak but to no effect. On 29th January 2021, in the US, I finally received a proper diagnosis by a top neurosurgeon in the field: craniocervical instability. This means that my head is not properly attached to my neck because the ligaments connecting them are damaged. These ligaments don't generally heal very well. The symptoms of this are nearly indistinguishable from the symptoms of a CSF leak, even including drainage from the nose which has the characteristics of CSF. The surgeon offered to put rods, screws and plates in my skull and upper neck to fix the skull to the neck and also fuse the top 3 vertebrae together and to the skull, but after a heart to heart with the surgeon, I learned that the surgery is drastic, difficult and potentially life changing. So I tried injection of my own stem cells harvested from my hip bone marrow into the ligaments to help them heal. Unfortunately, I had about a 60% chance of success and the treatment was unsuccessful. So I had the fusion surgery in December 2021. Unfortunately, the surgery also has a fairly high failure rate, and it seems to have failed - - - YOU CAN HELP HEAL ME - - The fusion surgery that I had uses one of several configurations of hardware to reconnect the skull and neck. This particular configuration does not seem to have been ideal for me. Additionally, one of the screws was put too far into my skull, which punctured the sac that contains the cerebrospinal fluid and caused a leak of fluid which is contributing to increased symptoms and debilitation. However, there are other configurations offered by different surgeons who could do a revision surgery and give me a chance at recovery. Unfortunately, I am nearly out of money and don't have enough to cover the cost of another surgery. I also have no income because benefits were denied because of the time that I spent in the US. I am in Wales now and trying again to get benefits, but this is a process that takes months at the best of times.