Anyone had back surgery?

Looks like I’m going to have to have back surgery. Anyone had it done? What was your recovery time? They are talking about not driving or travelling for six weeks. Is that accurate? How long were you out of action if you’ve had it? This is lumbar fusion with two plates and four screws as well as a bone graft on top of the common trimming a bit off the damaged disc. I’ve heard with the disc people are instantly back on their feet, like as soon as they wake up, but with fusion and graft I guess that adds a lot. Am I in for months of pain and rehab? I am trying to get a 2nd and 3rd opinion before I go under the knife.

Never had it done. Been scrubbed in on many of them getting done.

It's gonna hurt. It's gonna take a long time to heal. You should not be smoking, or it will take 2x as long to heal, if ever. You obviously have problems now or they wouldn't be going in there. What they told you is accurate. When it's all over with, you will hopefully not be as berkeleyed up as you are now. That is a "successfull" outcome.

In reply to Dr. Hess:

Bugger, I was hoping it was a worst case scenario and the average to fit people healed quicker. Thankfully for all my vices smoking has never been one of them.

My wife had her L5/L6 grafted together with a titanium plate (one of the few people born with the extra L6 I guess coupled with a college soccer injury).

She was late 20s when she had it done, and she did have probably 4 weeks of sit on the couch only recovery, plus another few of very little activity.

But she will tell you it was the best thing ever for her happiness in life. Even the docs say it will not be a permanent fix and she will likely need another fusion in her life, but she was very pain limited before and has next to zero pain now.

In reply to Robbie:

How long ago? is she still in her 20's or was this 20 years ago?

I'm 47 and very active.

oops, yeah, that seems like a relevant detail. Surgery was 7-8 years ago I think. I guess she may have been 25 when it was done (rather than late 20s). She has since had 2 babies and no other problems though. She is also very active. Wasn't so much in the year or two before the surgery (she literally couldn't), but she is back to being very active.

I got tackled in flag football in highschool and broke my L5 vertebrae. After a few months of complaining about pain, my parents finally took me in for scans and such. Doctors tried a brace (hips to chest) for 6 months but nothing was healing, so they had to do surgery. I have screws on the bottom and clamps up top, and they also added some bone marrow from my hip after scraping the broken bones. I think - it's been 10 years.

I was in the hospital for a little under 2 weeks, and then it still took ~6 more weeks until I started PT. I wasn't in bed the whole time, but I was wearing a back brace and taking pain meds for those 6 weeks. It was not fun, especially because I had to go to school for most of it. I got lucky that I don't have any other lingering effects, except that I now have Crohns disease that I like to blame on having all that foreign material in my body - I can't prove it, but since it's an autoimmune disease and it popped up about 6 months after surgery...

I worked with one of the world's greatest back surgeons. He once told me: "I can teach a monkey how to operate. I cannot teach a man not to operate."

Brokeback wrote: I got tackled in flag football in highschool and broke my L5 vertebrae. After a few months of complaining about pain, my parents finally took me in for scans and such. Doctors tried a brace (hips to chest) for 6 months but nothing was healing, so they had to do surgery. I have screws on the bottom and clamps up top, and they also added some bone marrow from my hip after scraping the broken bones. I think - it's been 10 years. I was in the hospital for a little under 2 weeks, and then it still took ~6 more weeks until I started PT. I wasn't in bed the whole time, but I was wearing a back brace and taking pain meds for those 6 weeks. It was not fun, especially because I had to go to school for most of it. I got lucky that I don't have any other lingering effects, except that I now have Crohns disease that I like to blame on having all that foreign material in my body - I can't prove it, but since it's an autoimmune disease and it popped up about 6 months after surgery...

Crohn's often manifests itself in the teen years. I started having problems at around 14 years of age (around 1967), but wasn't diagnosed until 1999.

Dr. Hess wrote: I worked with one of the world's greatest back surgeons. He once told me: "I can teach a monkey how to operate. I cannot teach a man not to operate."

Not sure I'm smart enough to understand that. Are you saying I shouldn't have the op done?

Dr. Hess wrote: I worked with one of the world's greatest back surgeons. He once told me: "I can teach a monkey how to operate. I cannot teach a man not to operate."

soo much truthiness

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

Dr. Hess wrote: I worked with one of the world's greatest back surgeons. He once told me: "I can teach a monkey how to operate. I cannot teach a man not to operate."

Not sure I'm smart enough to understand that. Are you saying I shouldn't have the op done?

have you exhausted all other avenues? Last resort should be surgery (in my totally unprofessional opinion)

oldeskewltoy wrote:

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

Dr. Hess wrote: I worked with one of the world's greatest back surgeons. He once told me: "I can teach a monkey how to operate. I cannot teach a man not to operate."

Not sure I'm smart enough to understand that. Are you saying I shouldn't have the op done?

have you exhausted all other avenues? Last resort should be surgery (in my totally unprofessional opinion)

Trust me I don't want surgery. I've spent since April bouncing between docs, urgent care, chiropractors, Physical Therapy, massage, reflexology etc. I'm in constant pain and it's really affecting my life and ability to work, play, travel. I thought I was getting better at the end of June, but out trip to Colorado nearly killed me. People who know ,me know I don't like using drugs (as in legal prescribed by doc) and that I prefer to follow natural medicine and therapies as much as is possible, but for the last few weeks prescription meds are all that allows me to function at all and not literally collapse screaming in agony. That's how I woke up the rest of the house a couple of weeks ago, I was on the floor literally crying in pain, unable to move. My ideal outcome at this point is someone to tell me I don’t need the fused vertebra and I can get away with just cutting a bit off the disc, but the MRI makes it look pretty collapsed and instead of being above each other the upper vertebra is now offset and overlapping the other one. Excuse my non-medical terms. I iZ Eng1n3erEd not Doc.

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

oldeskewltoy wrote:

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

Dr. Hess wrote: I worked with one of the world's greatest back surgeons. He once told me: "I can teach a monkey how to operate. I cannot teach a man not to operate."

Not sure I'm smart enough to understand that. Are you saying I shouldn't have the op done?

have you exhausted all other avenues? Last resort should be surgery (in my totally unprofessional opinion)

Trust me I don't want surgery. I've spent since April bouncing between docs, urgent care, chiropractors, Physical Therapy, massage, reflexology etc. I'm in constant pain and it's really affecting my life and ability to work, play, travel. I thought I was getting better at the end of June, but out trip to Colorado nearly killed me. People who know ,me know I don't like using drugs (as in legal prescribed by doc) and that I prefer to follow natural medicine and therapies as much as is possible, but for the last few weeks prescription meds are all that allows me to function at all and not literally collapse screaming in agony. That's how I woke up the rest of the house a couple of weeks ago, I was on the floor literally crying in pain, unable to move. My ideal outcome at this point is someone to tell me I don’t need the fused vertebra and I can get away with just cutting a bit off the disc, but the MRI makes it look pretty collapsed and instead of being above each other the upper vertebra is now offset and overlapping the other one. Excuse my non-medical terms. I iZ Eng1n3erEd not Doc.

I can attest to this. Ade is all about natural solutions and non-Western alternative medicine. However, at this point he's run into something that can't be helped by waving crystals over it.

Seriously, I'm sorry about all this. You don't seem to have any good alternatives here, only "less bad" ones. The good thing is that you've already been able to do a lot of the "summer" things that you wanted to do like your Colorado trip and our trip to the Indy 500. And I promise to bring you food and racing movies when you are recovering.

SWMBO had what you are talking about done in January on L3/L4. 2 plates w/4 screws and a Teflon pad between vertebra. Now, several months later she regrets not having done it sooner. She has some permanent damage, some numb spots on her legs that most likely won't go away but it is significantly less than before surgery. Before she couldn't walk more than a few houses down the street, now she's walking 2 miles at a time twice a day. Yeah, hurts a lot right after but gets better every day. They give you good drugs. 6 weeks till driving is what she had to do also and then she had to slowly work on distance/time behind the wheel. There are still things she can't do yet but she's working on it and doing more every day. She's babysitting our 4 month old grandson during the week full time now. Long completely heal time. There will be stuff you can't do anymore. Like twisting and lifting. Maybe you'll heal quicker, SWMBO's back was really bad before she relented to surgery and she's older.

Surgery should be the very last resort. You can always whack someone. You can never un-whack someone.

Not to say it is never warranted, just it should be a last resort. Hadjipavlou's point was that some surgeons tend to look at what they can whack, not what they should whack. People flew in from all over the world to have him whack them. Like sheiks on their own personal jets, and not gulf streams, either, with the whole family/entourage.

The only reason for a fusion is an instability, as you describe. OK, or a fracture/tumor, etc., but mainly an instability which those other things would have caused anyway.

Good Luck. Follow the surgeon's orders and do your PT afterwards. If they give you a choice of your own bone or someone else's, ask the doc what he has had best results with and don't rule out someone else's. Most people complain of pain at the bone donor site (usually your hip, or anterior superior iliac crest) more than they do the back surgery site. "Used parts" from the junk yard don't give you that problem. Oh, and the screws/plates/rods are just there to hold the bones together until they fuse.

spitfirebill wrote:

Brokeback wrote: I got tackled in flag football in highschool and broke my L5 vertebrae. After a few months of complaining about pain, my parents finally took me in for scans and such. Doctors tried a brace (hips to chest) for 6 months but nothing was healing, so they had to do surgery. I have screws on the bottom and clamps up top, and they also added some bone marrow from my hip after scraping the broken bones. I think - it's been 10 years. I was in the hospital for a little under 2 weeks, and then it still took ~6 more weeks until I started PT. I wasn't in bed the whole time, but I was wearing a back brace and taking pain meds for those 6 weeks. It was not fun, especially because I had to go to school for most of it. I got lucky that I don't have any other lingering effects, except that I now have Crohns disease that I like to blame on having all that foreign material in my body - I can't prove it, but since it's an autoimmune disease and it popped up about 6 months after surgery...

Crohn's often manifests itself in the teen years. I started having problems at around 14 years of age (around 1967), but wasn't diagnosed until 1999.

Yea I know, and they don't really know if it's all genetics or something else in addition. I didn't have any symptoms until after my surgery, and was in the hospital for 2 weeks within 6 months of surgery. But no one really knows, and it doesn't matter - I have it no matter what haha.

Interesting on the Crohn's after the whack. My friend has Lupus, also an auto-immune disease. His started after he was hit on his bike. He had a tib-fib fracture, lots of time in the hospital, surgeries, infections, etc. Lupus is somewhat unusual in men. Now, he had exposure to a banned rocket fuel in the 70's that has been linked to Lupus, but to have no problems for 40 years, then after a surgery/etc., Lupus comes out. I wonder if it was related to any blood products he may have been given during the surgery/hospital stay. Hard to say.

You might also want to check out this ProPublica site for finding a surgeon in the area who performs many operations with fewer complications. Most are OK. I know a few personally I would never let touch me.

Dr. Hess wrote: Interesting on the Crohn's after the whack. My friend has Lupus, also an auto-immune disease. His started after he was hit on his bike. He had a tib-fib fracture, lots of time in the hospital, surgeries, infections, etc. Lupus is somewhat unusual in men. Now, he had exposure to a banned rocket fuel in the 70's that has been linked to Lupus, but to have no problems for 40 years, then after a surgery/etc., Lupus comes out. I wonder if it was related to any blood products he may have been given during the surgery/hospital stay. Hard to say.

Yea, hard to know for sure but I'd be interested if someone could prove it. A family friend also developed Crohns (at age 40) after getting back surgery. I doubt my sample size of 2 is adequate to draw any conclusions though.

Adrian - Sorry for the sidetrack. If you've tried alternatives and nothing is helping, pick the best surgeon you can (travel for it if you need to! my surgeon had operated on pars fractures like mine on young athletes before me, I think he had ~30 or so under his belt) and follow all the recommendations after for rest, PT, etc.

My Lamina was floating around because both sides were fractured, so letting things go longer wasn't recommended.

Had it done at around 35 years old. Surgeon said "6 to 8 weeks". I assumed, since I was young, relatively healthy, and not overweight, I'd be on the "6 weeks" end of the equation and told work I'd be back no later than 6 weeks after the surgery. Long story short, I was nowhere near ready at 6 weeks. At 8 weeks, I was moving slow, got tired very easily and needed to stand a lot, but was able to go back to work. I did all of the recommended post-op PT and walked as much as possible. One thing I would STRONGLY advise against is a winter surgery if you live in the snow belt. You will need to walk, a lot, to get your strength back. A slip on ice can set you back weeks.

Thanks for all the feedback. Sounds scary. I went to see my Chiro and showed her the MRI. She agrees that the laminectomy part is probably necessary but does not see the need to the plates and fusing the two vertebrae. Going to see another Chiro tomorrow and have another appointment with a another osteopathic surgeon next Weds.

If I 'only' need the laminectomy it sounds like the pain is much less and the recovery much faster.

This thread is scary as all hell.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: Thanks for all the feedback. Sounds scary. I went to see my Chiro and showed her the MRI. She agrees that the laminectomy part is probably necessary but does not see the need to the plates and fusing the two vertebrae. Going to see another Chiro tomorrow and have another appointment with a another osteopathic surgeon next Weds. If I 'only' need the laminectomy it sounds like the pain is much less and the recovery much faster.

I know chiros can be helpful, but I'd give the surgeons' opinions about 100x the weight of the chiros' opinions.

Have you looked into disc replacement instead of fusion? Not sure about the current state/status of this option. I thought I was headed for fusion on L5-S1 (the lowest disc in your spine unless you are one of these weirdos with an L6) about 12 years ago and was terrified of the potential long term effects (progressive rupture of successive discs & additional fusions). At that time there were either 3 or 4 artificial disc replacement devices undergoing FDA clinical trials. Two of the devices had a 5-10 year history of approved use outside the US. I managed to find a neurosurgeon that was as averse to surgery as I was and have managed to find a workable solution that did not require surgery at that time. I expect it will become necessary at some point, but the longer I can avoid it the better the technology will get and I will benefit from waiting as long as I can.