Help treat CCI - a rare debilitating neck trauma

Davit Harutyunyan is organizing this fundraiser.

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Who this will help

Hi, my name is Davit, I've created this fundraiser on behalf of my friend Levon, who has been suffering from cranio-cervical instability for the last 3 years, a medical condition that occurs when the ligaments and connective tissues that support the head and neck become weakened or damaged.

Here's an image which explains what CCI can lead to:

Why I'm fundraising

In the last 3 years, Levon has spent over 30,000USD out of pocket to treat this condition. Due to lack of knowledge on such condition overseas, in 2022, Levon had to travel to New York to get a very complex up-right cervical MRI to confirm his condition and get the dignity of diagnosis, which he did.

The video below shows cerebrospinal fluid movement difference before and after the atlas (top vertebrae) adjustment, indicating that ligaments holding it are damaged and loose. Due to such, vagus nerve, internal jugular veins, arteries as well as other vital structures of the neck, are under constant compression/irritation, leading to severe neurological symptoms over time.

Eventually, in 2023, he got a stem cell treatment in Colorado, at Centeno-Schultz Clinic, which is the only clinic in US which specializes in this procedure. The treatment has helped, but to a limited extent. He now requires additional rounds of stem cell injections to completely get rid of instability as well as perform curve-correction treatments with trained physicians to restore his quality of life.

Lack of cervical lordosis is detrimental to the CSF flow, and based on the scan results, Levon has partially empty sella, dural ectasia of the optic nerve sheaths, both findings having been directly correlated with intracranial pressure

(Green represents normal, Red represents deviation due to damage to connective tissue)

The goal of this fundraiser is to help accumulate enough money to afford multiple stem-cell treatments to repair damaged ligaments as well as curve restoration work to restore the proper curve of his cervical spine. Levon managed to spend around 30.000USD during 3 years of his battling this condition, and now he needs your help.

The impact of your support

To this date, Levon experiences the following symptoms on daily basis:

Pulsatile Tinnitus (Heart pounding inside of my head)

Tinnitus (Ringing in the ears)

Ear sensitivity to sound

Loss of vision

Insomnia

Intra-cranial hypertension

Headaches

Brain-fog

Gastro-intestinal issues

Heart issues

Varicose veins (as a result of poor blood flow and heart issues due to vagus nerve compression in his neck)

POTS

Severe depression & Anxiety (as a direct result of having to endure this for years)

All of the above sounds bad enough, but where it gets absolutely awful is when you realize that all of this has a compound effect. Suffer this list of symptoms for a week, and eventually you recover, but experience this for years without a break, and you feel border-line disabled.

As a result, his life has become an absolute nightmare. He feels extremely exhausted and finds it hard to cope with day to day life tasks, to the point where everyday he wonder just how much longer he could last.

Due to Insomnia, he hasn't had a restful sleep in years. Lack of sleep, accompanied by severe brain-fog, makes it an impossible task to exercise even basic cognitive functions. His memory is "non-existent", his consciousness is depleted to the extent he finds it hard to work, communicate, and think clearly.

Today, after almost 4 years of battling this, spending over 30.000USD out of his own pocket, traveling the world, visiting countless doctors, performing different scans, examinations, assessments, and navigating this completely on my own because there is barely any information online on the condition and all his doctors told me this is some kind of depression, as well as having none of his relatives show even remote level of compassion, because doctors fail to diagnose him so it must be all in his head...he finally had to disregard his ego and come to realization that, he can't get through this on his own, and he need your help to get his life back.

HOW IT ALL STARTED.....

A picture of Levon in 2006, wearing a soft collar due to a neck injury he suffered during Greco-Roman wrestling training session.

Back then, doctors told him everything would be fine, that there's nothing to worry about. If only he knew, how in 15 years, his neck would render him borderline disabled.

As he continued to train contact sports throughout years, eventually in 2020, he felt a variety of symptoms, including dizziness, headaches, vertigo and brain-fog. He went to a local hospital to get a CT scan of my head, just to be sure that there is no brain damage.

CT came clean, but doctor suggested that he might have a mild concussion, so he was advised to just spend a week in his bed, and everything should be fine.

For the first few months, he didn't care much. He continued to visit different doctors (neurologists, neuro-surgeons, physiatrists and etc.) to understand why symptoms persist. He kept himself in shape and continued to train, so even though he was already in pain and suffered from insomnia, he continued with my normal life-style, thinking this will eventually go away, but it didn't.

Fast forward 9 months from the onset of trauma, his legs went numb and he couldn't run or train anymore. He couldn't get a proper night sleep for almost a year, so he felt extremely exhausted and couldn't think clear anymore. Eventually, he had to quit his job because he just couldn't do it physically. He developed GI issues and suffered from daily stomach aches. He later discovered there was an on-going inflammation in his gut, and also developed fatty pancreas. Because of lack of sleep, mentally, he felt disabled. Worst of all, the doctors just shrug their shoulders, nodded their heads, said that he should be fine and he should jump on antidepressants because all of this was just psychosomatics.

Once he reflected on all of the above, he sat down and told himself "Nobody knows what this is, nobody knows how to cure it, I'm getting worse every day and it doesn't look like it will go away on it's own, I must level my approach and take this seriously, if I don't, I will get in a big trouble"

He had to take this matter into his own hands, and figure out what this is. As he started to assess everything that has been done thus far, all the expertise he got from doctors, he recalled how during one of his appointments, one neurologist suggested - "Even though it feels like your symptoms are to do with your head, a lot of the issues you describe could stem from your neck, you should not dismiss it". Thanks to her, she aligned him in the right direction, and god knows if he could get through this on his own without this tiny bit of truth that would later enable him to find the cure.

As he continued to travel around Europe, visiting countless doctors, trying out migraine injections, anti-depressants, all sorts of treatments which had zero yield, he realized, he must travel to the best of the best to get to the bottom of this; so he had to visit Dr. Scott Rosa in New York to perform an up-right MRI in motion to finally understand what is going on.

Scott is the worlds top doctor when it comes to neck injuries. The up-right MRI came at a cost, and it took him a year of suffering and work through pain to amass 10k USD to be able to afford this trip.

At this point he was so desperate, that he thought "If Scott will be yet another doctor who will tell me that I'm absolutely fine and that it's all in my head; I should probably just stop fighting this and admit myself to a psychiatric ward, jump on the whatever meds they prescribe me and forget about my life".

Lucky for him however, upon getting assessed by Scott, completing the up-right MRI and getting his atlas bone adjusted, Scott told him, that none of this was fake, that my neck condition was real and was the reason behind all of my suffering.

To say that he felt relieved would be an understatement. After 3 years of being labelled an imposter by countless doctors, he finally got to the bottom of this. "I blasted into tears, when I finally realized, this is what I have been searching for, this is it, I got the dignity of diagnosis, I no longer have to wander around, trying to figure out what this is, this is it..."

To get an idea of what he has gone through, he found a video online which shows a famous American NFL player, Jim McMahon, who suffered something that would closely resemble his condition. He also got treated by Scott, and Scott was also the only person who could provide relief for the first time in years.

After the MRI, him and Scott knew, the neck is the cause for all of this, so now that they knew what it is, regenerative medicine was the solution. They had to tighten up damaged structures, so his spine would be able to hold his head again.

Unfortunately for him, the only place in the world that could provide the treatment he needed, was located in Colorado, US. He was mentally prepared that he'd need to amass another grand sum to afford this, which turned out to be 13.000USD, which took another year of work through pain and sheer will, and he did.

Fast forward 1 year, August 2023, He is on his way to Colorado, with a letter from the clinic which confirmed his intent of travel.

Finally I met Chris Centeno, who was supposed to review my DMX, MRI before proceeding with injections. He confirmed CCI and proposed treatment plan, everything went very well.

Today, it's been 3 months, and for the first time in last 3 years he felt some sort of relief. Certain symptoms went down in intensity, few have disappeared, but the bulk of symptoms remained, and it will take multiple more injections after another set of digital motion x-rays to confirm which areas will need to be targeted in the next treatment.

The point of this GoFundMe fundraiser is to assist me in getting treated more to finally resolve this once and for all. The reason I never launched one before, was that I wanted to get through this on my own, without any assistance, and I thought that once I get this procedure done, this will be done and dusted, chapter of pain will be over.

Unfortunately, it's not so simple at at this point, as I definitely require work to restore my cervical spine as well as perform more injections until connective tissues in my cervical spine are completely repaired.

Knowing now that neck is the sole problem and stem cell treatment actually worked, I'm comfortable in asking for help because none of it will go in vain, every cent will work towards finalizing this treatment. After so long, I can finally see hope of getting my life back.