[CharlesinCharge]

Sandra,

I can relate to your story, especially to a surgeon taking the conservative route instead of trying to fix all the problems at once. My back pain started out of the blue in 9/05 (no specific injury) and by 11/05 I had an MRI and it showed 3 levels affected---two looked very bad and one looked somewhat bad. When I had my discogram a couple of months later, the two very bad levels tested positive for concordant pain but the somewhat bad level did not. When I went to Germany to have my ADR surgery, I told the surgeon to just go ahead and replace all three levels---why not be proactive since the 3rd level would probably continue to degenerate and I did not want to come back and have another surgery down the road. But, he declined and so I just had the two levels replaced.

Like you, I got immedate pain relief and felt pretty good after the surgery, but I NEVER got back to 100%, only about 75% (I remember being jealous of people like Harrison that had 100% relief of their pain). About a year later my pain started to increase, and when they eventually re-tested the 3rd level that was not replaced (via discogram), they found it now tested positive and had further degenerated and was causing the pain. I had to have another operation to fuse that level (9/08), and I am almost 7 months out from that surgery and doing very well.

So, the point of my long winded story is this---have you had your other two levels that were not operated on re-tested (via MRI and more importantly discogram)? I think this would be critical, as they may have degenerated further (as mine did) and unfortunately a second surgery may be necessary to stop your continued pain. I know there could be many other things that are causing your pain, but I think the FIRST place I would look would be the discs that were problematic the first time around but were not replaced. Have you done that?

Best of luck,