Advice

Hi Ash. My name is Patricia. First, happy to meet you. Second, I am going to try to be as kind and as honest as I can be with you. I live in the US, I am 67 yrs old, a retired Ortho Trauma RN, and 5 months out from a Modified L4-L5 Decompression Laminectomy, Disectomy and fusion with bone graft. I have done very well so far, with much concentration and determination as to adherring to the post op restrictions. It is not an easy task. I catch myself automatically attempting to make a perfectly natural move that is against spinal restrictions. You are young. You have a young family. I assume that your little ones are energetic and love to jump and play with their Dad. There would be no jumping on you, No you reaching down to pick one of them up. No twisting, No bending at the waist, no lifting over 5 lbs to start, then gradually increasing to 10 lbs. I am at 5 months out and believe me, it is a struggle for me to reach down for a bog of dog food at the grocery. You are a plumber.......need I say more? I think you would have a difficult time going back to that kind of work for a year or two. I am not trying to discourage you. My surgery was kind of do it now or ride in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. The herniated disc had compressed the spinal cord to the point that I was falling face down w/o warning. I was in horrible pain for over 7 months but was fortunate that plain old OTC Ibuprophen in a 600mg dose 3 times daily at least allowed me to work. The discomfort I have now is muscular and just takes time of slowly stretching your muscles and ligaments through exercise. I do not regret my decision to have surgery in the least. However, I would advise you to go for this pre-op appointment with a list of questions for the doc. I would also do a You Tube search for Spnial fusions, Laumbar Laminectomy, and Lumbar Discectomy. Depending on which procedure they determine you need, that is the one you need to study. Then ask yurself if you think that you can do what they are going to ask of you or not...for as long as they say you are going to have to do it. This is my best advice, Ash. Sooner or later, you are going to have to have something done for those discs...they do not miraculously disappear by themselves, however I did have a doc tell me at 32 yrs old that I have a herniated disc at C3-C4 that I never had surgery for and the MRI shows no disc herniation there presently, so your quess is as good as mine. But that area only has the head's weight on it. Your Lumbar region has the weight of everything from hips up. Have you tried wearing a really good back brace when you are at work? God speed, and please stay in touch.

Patricia

Hi Ash,

I read Patricia's reply and I can assure you that is very good advice. 

I  see that you've never had a MRI or Cat scan. I do not know if you can afford it, but perhaps it can throw some light on the situation.

My wife had two back operationsearly in 2008. The first one was not successful and in the second they placed a metal support on the affected disks. However, the specialist warned us that this op will only relieve some of the pain and that she will experience pain for the rest of her life. Today, 6 years after the op, she still have to use painkillers. On the other hand I have to ad that the damage to her spine was really extensive and she had back problems for most of her life. She is now 71 years old.

Myself, I was also diagnosed with sciatica during February 2014 and I am still experimenting with different kind of treatments to try to find some sort of combination of treatments that gives me the best relieve.

As Patricia also mentioned, you must be very careful of lifting any kind of weight and condition yourself not to make any movement that you know hurts. I know that it will impinge on your profession as a plumber, but if you follow Patricia's advice, you will go a long way to improvement.

I will follow this discussion and will try to point you to some excellent professional written websites. Sites written by back specialists from which I got very good advice.

Best regards