[jss]

Ben,

I absolutely agree; the best course of action is to avoid surgery until it is no longer possible to continue to avoid it. On your contact with eight ADRs... Be aware that the success of an ADR surgery seems to be inversely proportional to number implanted. Someone that can surf after eight ADRs ... bless that gentleman; he's probably in a class of one.

The three times I went with surgery was because I was developing myelopathy of some sort. The first time, when looking at my images, the surgeon's eyes were as big as golf balls, telling me that my spinal cord was compressed to less than half its normal size and that I could be paralyzed if I didn't have surgery soon. He told me the same thing two years later. The last time I was told, by two different doctors, that I was developing myelomalacia from the trauma to the spinal cord and that it 'might' not develop fully if I had a decompression surgery ASAP; and that if the condition did develop that I probably wouldn't survive. In retrospect, I believe much of that was probably overstated.

Bone spurs that are on the posterior vertebral body are accessed by removing the intervertebral disc; which commits you to fusion or ADR. In each of my cases, the neural foramen were also impinged; not just the spinal cord; so a laminectomy wouldn't have addressed all of the symptoms.

If I had it to do over again, I'd probably do the first two surgeries differently. I'm not certain that they were needed as quickly as they were sold to me.

Good luck, Jeff