'Hopeless and helpless': Regina mother seeks help to treat rare spinal disease
CTV
Mary Grace Rico is seeking help in getting treatment for a rare spinal condition.
Mary Grace Rico has spent the past seven years seeking medical help for what began as chronic pain.
She struggled to find a physician who would give her a diagnosis as opposed to a prescription for pain medication.
"My thinking was, oh, I'll get, you know, that treatment because, without the proper diagnosis, you know, you would they'll just give me pain reliever after pain medication....I need a treatment. Not only pain medication like you just give me pain medication. After pain medication, it's drugs. It's not helping me at all." Rico said.
The now 46-year-old often found herself having to advocate for more thorough assessments.
After struggling to receive a diagnosis in Canada, Rico and her husband sought a second opinion out of the country, first with an American doctor and then in the Philippines.
When she finally received the diagnosis of a rare spinal condition: tethered spinal chord with SRRINX, a fluid cyst in her cervical spine and C4 SYRINX and cervical and Lumbar Stenosis with myelopathy in her lumbar region, she had hope that it might lead to a solution.
After travelling to Blusson Spinal Chord Centre in Vancouver, with the paperwork and diagnosis she received, Rico was told that they were unwilling to perform the surgery due to risk of paralysation.
