Category Archives: Michael E. Janssen, DO

Bill Allen works 70 hours per week in his lawn care business, building retaining walls and operating heavy equipment. Though he doesn’t recall a specific incident that triggered his neck pain, he knows that it started last spring. “It felt like I’d pinched a nerve on the left side of my neck, and I couldn’t…

After a day of boogie boarding on Kauai, where he had moved nine months ago, Dr. Mark Foster woke up in a lot of pain. “I don’t remember any specific incident at the beach,” says the 42-year old primary care physician, “but by the next morning I could tell that the old disc injury in my neck had flared up.” During the next two weeks, he developed progressive pain in his neck, as well as numbness and weakness in his left arm. “The pain made it so I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate at work, and could barely turn my neck, which made driving difficult,” he says. “But what really frightened me was my left arm, which just felt dead,” he says. An MRI showed a herniated disc pushing on his spinal cord. Because there are no neurosurgeons or spine surgeons on Kauai, the former Littleton resident flew to Denver to see a neurosurgeon friend in the metro Denver area.