Quote:
Originally Posted by annapurna
I'm not going to touch the argument about conservative care vs. surgery. Even if you're dead set on surgery, though, a good solid core strengthening and flexiblity regime buys you time, gives you the most you can get out of your life while you're working to get surgery, and makes your recovery time shorter after the surgery. A few years back, Bertagnoli replaced every disk in one gentleman's c-spine with a mix of ADRs and fusions. The man had worked hard to remain fit and it paid off with a recovery time in weeks. I don't recall the exact time but he was up and about within some number of weeks, definitely less than two months.
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Laura corrected me. The person had every disk in his L-spine, not c-spine, even strengthening the argument for being in good shape at that start of your surgery.
Mind you, it's pretty unlikely that you'd even be here reading these posts if you're the kind of person who could be entirely repaired by PT. My advice: continue pursuing surgery and use PT to improve your quality of life until you have your ducks in a row for the surgery. If things go the way they typically go, you'll have at least a month or two of PT under your belt, so to speak, by the time you get to your surgery/no-surgery decision point. See if the PT is helping then and make an informed decision. The other important thing is to not look at PT as something you have to go to a therapist and get your PT appointment or else it doesn't count. Don't let those PT appointments crowd your life to the point where you don't have time to live. Get exercises, stretches, whatever from the therapist and do them faithfully at home and just use your appointments to add or subtract from those based on what's working and what isn't.