[JinSong]

Oh yes, I'm at Barrows as well, and I LOVE my surgeon (Dr. Fusco), but I have had frustrations with their system, and the hospital I ended up at was an absolute nightmare (my surgery was done at Chandler instead of the main hospital downtown). I'm surprised your surgeon there didn't do Mobi-Cs! That's specifically why I went up there, and as you saw, I lost my case for it, but because of the retrolisthesis issue, the Barrows surgeon actually wanted to do the ACDF anyway. I think he was a better surgeon than my other option, so I went with him anyway. Did you actually do your surgery at Barrow?

This is kind of an update of this week:

I was having a horrible time getting pain management, and physical and emotional support, and there have been *some* improvements in some of those areas. Some people have helped me out more, while others have been outright abusive, but soon I should have more independence and be less at the mercy of other people's ability to help me out.

I survived my 7-week follow-up appointment today. Turns out the reason I'm in so much more pain is because the spacer (PEEK cage) in my fusion is oversized. The disc had been extruded so long that there was a ton of arthritis in the space, so the smaller cage was too loose, so he used a bigger cage that stretched the area much more. Now that one disc space is a lot taller than the others in my spine, which is aggravating everything.

Thankfully, he wants me to go to the spine group's PM doctor to do facet injections to bring down the inflammation and hopefully break the pain cycle. Before he told me to cancel that appointment (because he wanted to manage my case for at least three months), so I'm glad I kept it! I asked him where he thinks about my scapula pain and my continuing right arm pain are coming from, and he didn't really have an answer other than it could be just from spinal cord damage, or it could be from somewhere else. So PM might end up doing more epidural injections too.

And I told my NS about how I was having issues with pain control, and not getting meds refilled, and asked if we could just make a plan for when and how he'd want me to taper, and if he could give me a bigger prescription that more closely matched that. So he gave me bigger scripts this time at least so I don't have to play beg for medications every five days (they kept promising to mail me refills that would never come). Ironically, I get home, and a week and half later the other prescriptions they'd promised me were also in the mail!

I was upset because on my post-op xrays, I'm definitely not fusing yet, which he was concerned about, but not *freaking out about* I have a vitamin D deficiency, so I'm supposed to increase my dose of that and re-recheck xrays in three months. Like a lot of us, my neck lost its natural curve from muscle spasms, so he was like hey! The fusion gave you back some natural curvature...in one spot at least o_O So that's...good?

Despite that, he's still going to let me start weaning out of the collar over the next two weeks, as long as I'm careful, so I'm happy for that. No more sleeping in this thing!!!!

I'm a little scared for more neck injections, but happy that there's a reason for my continued pain, it's been validated, I got more medication, and there's a plan for how to move forward from here other than just *sit around and suffer*

So, I don't know what I'll do if I don't fuse, but it is good to know that it *might* be possible to replace it with an ADR, if I had to/need to. It's hard not to be worried about ASD given my ongoing issues and the other discs that are already bad, but what's done is done. I'm just happy there's a plan to manage my pain for the moment, and more independence is coming soon--boot should be coming off my leg in the next week or two, neck brace is being weaned off, and once I fix my car I'll be able to drive and be less reliant on others to help me. I'm still in a lot of pain, but just knowing things are going to be done about it makes me feel better mentally.

Thank you so much for checking in with me--I don't know what I would do without online support forums like this one. This stuff literally steals your life, and it's so hard to explain/share with people that haven't lived through it.