Cervical Disc Herniation and swimming

I've been having numbness and tingling in the right arm for 2 weeks. I got an MRI last Friday, and it showed that I had herniated cervical disks (that's slipped disks in the neck in layperson-speak) at the following levels: C3-C4, C4-C5, and C5-C6 (this last level is where it's worst). I haven't experienced any loss of strength and coordination (yet). Based on the advice of a friend of mine that has had the same problem, I've avoided any exercise that could involve bending or stretching of the neck (so just stationary cycling for now), restricted myself to lifting no more than 10 lbs. at a time, and am taking anti-inflammatory medication. I'm awaiting a (timely) referral to a neurosurgeon. My questions to my fellow Masters swimmers: 1. Have any of you ever experienced this problem? 2. If the answer to (1) is yes, then what sort of treatment (medical and non-medical) did you receive? 3. Are there any specific things I should be avoiding, swimming-wise (certain strokes, drills, etc? I assume diving is out of the question) and exercise-wise? 4. Before I saw what my MRI looked like (I'm an Internal Medicine MD, so I could see my MRI was abnormal), I had continued to swim, and actually felt that swimming helped me feel better. Does anyone out there know if swimming can actually put you at risk for this type of injury? Physicians, as a rule, tend to err on the side of rest and inactivity for recovery from any injury, so if anyone has any evidence that states that I can keep up with at least some swimming while I find out what my course of treatment will be, I would certainly be grateful for that. I've only started to get seriously back into swimming since last fall, and was actually starting to feel good about my swimming, so this recent setback has me really bummed out at present :-(