Question: My mother had a strep B infection that developed in here C1-2 spine in Dec. 2015. She was in the hospital for 2 weeks, rehab for 3 weeks and home on IV antibiotics for two months followed by 1 month of oral antibiotics. She had horrible pain for a long time. She seemed to be getting better over 2-3 months following all the antibiotics and was getting some physical therapy when she fell and hit her head. Her neck painreturned and has been getting worse. The pain used to be on the left side and is now concentrated on the right side. Recently she began to have swelling of the area. She has revisited her neurosurgeon and her infectious disease doctor. They have performed testing and do not think she has a reoccurrence of infection. She is known to have non-surgical DDD in the cervical spine per the neurosurgeon. They sent her pain management her gave her temporal nerve blocks as well as a epidural injection at C7 with little to no relief. We have recently taken her to a different pain management doctor that can go higher in the spine with a catheter but he is concerned about waking up dormant bacteria. She is diabetic and has heart disease. He thinks that the pain is coming from outside the spinal column. He decided to give her a topical compound cream which has done very little. She is 79 years old and remains with a pain level of about a 9 on a 1-10 scale. We are at our not sure where to go from here. Can you please give me some direction. She can barely move her neck and the pain level is staying to high. She has had several MRI's and it shows bone edema. Do we need a CT of the neck, myelogram, bone scan, etc. I am at a loss. Her primary doctor does not have a clue and does not really act she wants to be involved in this due to the complexity. Any suggestions would be of help. Thanks, XXXXXXX