[MikeC]

Dear All;

This is my first posting on the forum that I fortunately discovered by accident.

I had a 2 level laminotomy in April 2011 and life has been miserable ever since. That was after consulting 3 surgeons who each had a different recomendation "do nothing" to "fusion", so I took the middle road, and have been suffering ever since.

I have seen my surgeon many times for follow up but all I hear is that my MRI is normal. That is a bad joke as I am in constant pain with numbness in both feet as the day goes on.

A friend of mine had mentioned disk replacement surgery in Germany to me at the time and I thought that was a crazy idea. Well two years later I no longer think that it is crazy, just scary.

My friend's son was operated on by Dr Ritter-Lang in 2008 and had good results, although he did mention that it was like a production line. Since I have been reading on the Internet I have come to realize that Ritter-Lang is
controversial.

I have been in touch with the office of Dr Thomas Bierstedt and his contact in
Germany; Malte Petersen. I see that Malte had been associated with Stenum and Dr Ritter-Lang but I have no information on Malte of on Dr Bierstedt, other than that they claim that he is one of the worlds greatest surgeons. They are recommending a 2 level ADR at S1/L5 and L4.

I had a phone call from Dr Bertagnoli's US agent, Tim Mcvair, who was rather
abrupt and had to hang up for another call. He has not returned my e-mail since our telephone conversation. Needless to say, I did not get a "warm and fuzzy" feeling although I cannot rule out this option.

The pain and numbness gets worse, it seems, by the day. I have a phone called scheduled with my physiatrist as HSS later today as I had asked her about ADR and I hope that she will give me some good advice. She has given my about 3 injections but they do not help. I have also tried Gabapentin and Lyrica which don't help either.

My questions are: does anyone have some feedback on Dr Bierstedt as there are very few comments on the forum? I would welcome any other suggestions that you might have.

Thanks for reading.

Mike