The dreaded "I" word

I have not posted for quite a while.I read somewhere that the biggest reason for people giving up BJJ whilst at purple belt is through injury. I hope that I am not going to fall into this category.

I have been struggling with a neck problem over the last few months, well since the end of February to be precise. I have had a mri and been to see a radiologist. and it turns out to be a problem with wear and tear changes to my neck.Clinically called cervical spondylosis. This has caused bone to grow from my vertebra and create a protrusion abutting the left roots in the canal at C7 Ti. This in turn causes a lot of discomfort and pain in the shoulder, arm and a numb hand.

Treatments seem to be to firstly leave it as 79% of people eventually improve as the body adapts, but this can take years as apposed to weeks or months. You can take loads of drugs to keep the pain at bay, which is what I am currently doing.
Your second option is to have steroid injections in your nerve or an epidural. This again is to mask the pain until the body does it's magic. (the whole reason am in this situation is because my body was doing it's so called magic)
Finally you do have the option of surgery.This appears to be a two edged sword. On the plus side it can alleviate the problem on the negative side it can not help at all, in fact from researching post operative outlooks many people end up in a worse state than when they started ! There is a minimal risk of paralysis, but this seems extremely rare.

The long and the short of it is that I am not training much at the moment. I am trying to go a least once a week, but can only roll for a little time before the pain gets the better of me.

The main problem is all the peripheral training, hillsprints, running etc.I feel my cardio deteriorating, I know when I get over this I will have a lot of work to get back.

My aims are to try and get a referral to a specialist to see if surgery may be an option. If the protrusion is fairly localised and they consider it to have a 75% or above chance of success then I may consider this route. There is multilevel disease, but the only element affecting me is the protrusion at C7 T1.

If this is not an option then bring on the steroid addiction. On the down side to this excessive use of steroids can actually speed up the degenerative sides of the problem.

I am trying to get a referral next week I will post when I know.