Surgery.

Hi Maggi,

              I really hope that you don't feel like you are walking on egg shells. People want a solution and often they feel like surgery will be the best option, However this is not always the case. In my situation I was told 85% of people had good recovery, I was in the 15%. It is something that we as individuals  have to accept there is no magic solution. I hope you are okay xo

Dear Maggie, don't be balanced on egg shells you have enough to contend with and you have your reasons and you GP agrees with you about fusion.

you may find yourself dwn the line months even years to try it when you simply can't take anymore.. And if not hope that chronic pain eases with other methods.  Must be so scary knowing people and hearing stories that fusion hasn't cured. I as an individual reached the point of i know all the risks and i am willing to take that chance as it was very disabling 

Bless you, I really do hope you find some sort of relief. Surgery was my last option sand 11 weeks post a 3 level spinal fusion although I'm not cured I am 60% better than I was And am able to manage to pain I have with meds. I am slowly reducing meds and hope to be prescription drug free at some point in the near future. Spinal fusiom does have many risks and long term can cause mobility problems but being a mother of 3 and only 42 i had to make the decision to live for now why I can enjoy my family and if problems arise later I will deal. For me at the moment it was the right decision my quality of life has improved so much and I'm not yet at the 3 month post op Mark.  Take care 

Hi Maggi7, you're not walking on egg shells. This is what this forum is all about to encourage, help and share stories.  It's an incredible hard choice to make and one that you can only be helped by the medical profession and listening to other stories of how things went for them. But at the end of the day it's down to you. I myself didn't really have much of a choice, it was a case of be operated on or end up paralised and at the age of 51 that wasn't something I wanted.  It wasn't easy and I wouldn't kid you that it was, but I had a fantastic surgeron who I had complete confidence in and the op went well. I was in much less pain but unbeknown to me that would not be the end of it as the rest of my back was just as bad. I refuse to give into it and lead as much of a normal life as I can and I won't kid you that I'm pain free as I'm far from it and have had 3 more surgeries since the 1st one.  I wish you well and hope you find some way of dealing with all of this.

There you have it Maggi. Susan, Laura, Sarah, Gail, and now myxelf. Unfortunately, back and neck pain complaints are prevelent in middle age group. Some are accident related, some are health related, some can even be attributed to a birth defect.......and then there is the old "aging process" to blame. I have learned from this forum that no matter where one lives, no matter why they sought out this forum in the first place, we either ARE in the same boat, (or) at some point, we have been there. You are goi g to hear stories from folks that relate to their perceptions of their own experiences. None of us are hear out of anything but good reasons. But you are going to hear poor outcomes as well as good ones. Some of us went ahead with surgery and some decided to put on the brakes. It is completely a decision one must make for their own situation. I will be honest with you, I have been one of the blessed. My surgery has been one of the best decisions I have ever made for myself. I am in the United States. I am 67 yrs old. I have been retired from bedside nursing for 10 months. And I ha e always been a physically active person. 18 months ago I began having nagging low back pain for the first time. MRI showed stenosis and bone spurs. I started taking Ibuprophen 600 mg as needed. It's odd that the stenosis had never bothered me. Considering I was on the final stretch before retirement, when my back became more than a nuisance, I went back to see my neurosurgeon. MRI showed disc herniation @L4-L5 along with the pre-existing Stenosis that was now severe rather than just there. That was Sept 2014. I was thinking that I would turn 66 March 2014, so I would take retirement May/June 2014. So I kept working. By the time I was actually a retired person 6/1/14, I could barely walk and I was in constabconstant pain taking Ibuprophen 600mg every 6 hrs around the clock. I will fast forward to surgery Nov 11, 2014. I was wheeled to my room from Recovery sitting upright on the stretcher with a huge smile on my face. The constant pain of 14 months had been eradicated! That is not to say that back surgery is for the faint of heart. I was told that I could expect to get 85% mobility back by 6 months and I am almost there w/ 85% back. That is not to say that I never have soreness or low back pain, because I do. My muscles are still healing and my ligaments still need to stretch a bit.it's a long process.....try going too fast and you risk messing up your surgery. All I am trying to say is please follow your restrictions. For now, do not bend, don't lift anything heavier than a 5 lb bagof sugar and don't twist at the waist/hips. and take whichever meds that have been prescribed as needed. Good luck Maggi. I hope you feel better soon.

Patricia

May I just say  that I wasn't middle-aged when I first experienced the pain of spondylolisthesis. i was barely thirty-four.  My GP told me that spondy isn't at all related to ageing. It can attack anyone at any age - and most often does so between the ages of thirty and forty. 

I'm at the point now when even getting out of bed of a morning is agonising. Everything I believed I'd be doing in my Autumn years has been abandoned.

Fusion surgery is notr for me: I have too many other health problems to make it a viable option. It would more than likely result in my being less mobile than prior to surgery  - and would certainly result in a furtherance of my respiritory problems. Anaesthetic does strange things to me, you see. One of the effects is congestion of my lungs. 

I'll never get any better than I am now. I have to accept that pain is part of my life. It limits my mobility. I cannot realise the dreams I had for this part of my life.  So many walks I was going to undertake. All beyond my reach now. 

The most painful part of it all is that I can't make the walk top the local cemetery - which is where the ashes of my elder son are interred. He died on 22nd November, 2012.  It's uphill, a mile away from my home, to where his ashes lie you see. And I can't make the walk. 

I have a wheelchair stashed away in the garden shed. I balk at using it. But, as I edge ever-closer to utter disablement, I wonder how my remaining son will cope with my incapacity. I had to cope with my mother's descent into dementia. It all-but killed my spirit. I don't want my son to face that when it comes to me beuing dependant in a different way. I dread the idea of being mentally alert, yet physically confined. 

My daughter-in-law is a carer in a home for the elderly demented. She sees so many people who have been diminished.  She tries to give the personal touch to each. 

When my son - her husband -died -at her feet - she tried to revive him by means of her CPR training. It failed. 

All of which is to say that some of us have been denied the opportunity to carry on. I live with never-ending pain.  I'll never have fusion surgery; it wouldn't make my condition better. 

And, yes, I DO feel like I'm on eggshells here. When most report positive results from surgery, I feel that I'm the spectre at the feast. The one lone, negative voice.