Stephen, I am not a doctor, but I do suspect there to be some kind of autoimmune response with this disease, kind of like rheumatoid arthritis. I have a close cousin of rheumatoid arthritis. My disease is psoriatic arthritis sans psoriasis, thank the good goddess. I'm certainly not the first to suspect this autoimmune connection, as I found out when I started doing a google search. If you do a search, you'll find articles written in medical literature about this topic. Not being a doctor, I didn't read the articles (mostly over my head), but it did confirm to me that the medical establishment is also wondering the same thing. However, DD still remains a mystery to them, and hence, to us. We can only surmise, and provide anecdotal evidence.

So, to answer your question, I'm not surprised if there are inflammatory signals going on throughout your body, if other parts are also predisposed to disease. ~ Diane

Stephen,

I had a similar reaction during and after RT. My doctor said the aching was due to the fact that the RT was attacking the diseased tissue. I also had my cord reduced. If you go to my name and look up the subject "from MRI to now" you can see how much the cord and nodule were reduced after RT.

Lori