Jesse Hirschl knew she wasn’t crazy, but no doctors could figure out the source of her excruciating pain.
They did know it started in November 2009, after her stopped car was rear-ended by a car going 45 miles per hour. The other car was totaled, and Hirschl’s nearly.
The pain — absolutely crippling, says the Denver woman — started in her lower neck. Over the months, it crept up and around all sides of her neck, the base of her skull and spread to the top of her head. She lost her job as a hair stylist and make-up artist because she says she could not get out of bed, much less tilt her head downward to work on a client’s hair, and she was suffering severe migraines and fatigue.
Countless doctors throughout the state said the same thing: They thought it looked like lower cervical damage, but they weren’t sure, and no treatments they suggested were helping, Hirschl says.
The main problem, as she saw it: The X-rays, MRIs and CAT scans weren’t able to capture what was going on inside her neck when she moved it in the ways that caused so much pain.
But digital motion X-rays could. Eight months after the accident, Hirschl learned about Boulder County’s only motion X-ray machine at Front Range DMX, which snaps X-rays of the body while it’s in motion.
“It helped diagnose an injury that had been untreated for eight months,” she says. “Having this knowledge was beyond words. When you’re in that much pain that you can’t get out of bed and all of the emotions that go with that, and they tell you ‘We don’t know,’ it’s difficult. It makes it easier to be part of your healing process if you have a thorough understanding of what’s going on.”
Boulder chiropractor Evan Katz has offered the digital X-rays for seven years, primarily for people with ongoing, under-diagnosed, chronic or acute neck pain. In fact, about 85 percent of the clients have whiplash injuries in their necks, according to the Web site. Other patients are athletes or have headaches, nausea, dizziness or shoulder, back or joint pain.
The machine can help doctors spot injuries that are only evident when you move, and scan the neck for ligament damage — concrete proof of an injury (for insurance companies, lawsuits or just peace of mind, as in Hirschl’s case). Unlike fluoroscopy, whereby the X-ray machine moves around the body, these machines stand still while the patient moves.
“If your pain increases with movement, logic tells you that your injuries should be looked at while moving,” the Web site says.
A typical examination takes three minutes, recording images at 30 frames per second.
Then Katz examines and measures the images to compare them with normal structure and movement patterns. This pinpoints the source of the pain, which allows him to create recommendations to help patients recover.
“It’s another piece of the puzzle,” he says. “It takes the guesswork out of it, which then keeps health care costs down. … Then we’re not guessing anymore, so we can create a specific diagnosis and treatment plan.”
Motion X-rays are not new, Katz says. They were invented one year after traditional X-ray machines. What’s new is greater knowledge of how the body moves and improved technology to use the information, Katz says.
He says there’s a need for all of the different kinds of imaging machines. For example, traditional X-rays use more radiation so they can penetrate deeper into the lower back.
But in his office, Katz says he has seen patients cry in relief after they finally get the answer they’re looking for.
One client, Chris, of Broomfield, calls the machine was his savior. He asked that his last name not be used because of a pending lawsuit surrounding the car accident that changed his life.
Two years ago, he says a car ran a red light and T-boned his car. He was in the hospital for 11 days, and he suffered for one year and nine months with undiagnosed pain, until he got a motion X-ray. He says he learned his ribs were still broken, his sternal joint was popping in and out and his C1 and C2 vertebrae were moving four times more than they were supposed to.
“I’m a believer in DMX and even more Dr. Katz,” Chris says. “Without them, I’d be in limbo, wondering. At least now we have a path with options.”
Still, it will be a long road to recovery, Chris says, and his headaches aren’t gone. He might need treatment for the rest of his life, but now he knows which positions of his neck to avoid — and just as important, he says, he knows why he was hurting.
“That knowledge is huge,” he says. “You start questioning your own person. Not knowing was killing me.”
Although Front Range DMX is the only place in Boulder County with the machine, it has regular referrals from Boulder Radiologists at Boulder Community Hospital, orthopedic surgeons and neurosurgeons, among others.
Contact Staff Writer Aimee Heckel at 303-473-1359 or heckela@dailycamera.com.
