Melissa,
Wow, I can relate. I exhausted all my appeals for adr. It seemed like in the end it just was not meant to be for me.
I am a 45 year old male who had DDD @ l5-s1, confirmed by MRI's & discogram. I only needed that one level fusion. My main concern was the imobility associated with a fusion. My doc explained to me that I would only lose 2-3% motion overall at the most and would easily be able to pick that up in my hip movement. He also asked me something that hit me and right then I knew I was going to have the fusion. What he said was, so how is your flexion & mobility in that area now and how has it been for the last several years. The answer, not good and my quality of life was seriously diminished.
Incidently, My doc (Dr Cohen, Asst. Prof.of spine surgery @ Johns Hopkins) has done dozens of ADR, but told me that this fusion was still a good option and said he was 95% certain it would have a good outcome for me. He did not try to steer me to adr is my point. He also told me that there are some type of fusions he does not do (ie: Stand alone cages), as he actually RE-DOES alot of them preformed by other docs that are unsuccessful.
I opted for an anterior approach with a cadaver bone and anterior instrumentation. That eliminated the need to "chop" bone from my hip, so I did not have that pain to deal with.
Well it has been 5 weeks post surgery and I can tell you that as soon as I came from surgery I knew he had NAILED IT! The initial pain was GONE.
Then a few weeks into my recovery I had to sneeze, Pre-op that would have caused a considerable amount of sharp pain and if I felt it coming on and had time I would brace for it. Well this time I had no time to brace and to my amazement,I felt NONE of the old pain. Again I was reassured the fix was in.
I was up walking the next morning after surgery and went home within 56 hours of surgery!
I had also expected to be somewhat miserable the first few weeks after surgery, but to my amazement I was not. The first day at home, and each day there after I would walk the neighborhood initially for about 1/4 mile, now up to 2-3 miles.
I am totally convinced I did the right thing, and it worked. I fuly expect nothing less than a 100% recovery. In fact I now will be able to do things I had given up due to the DDD.
Rember ADR is not always a perfect fix?
Seems there are plenty of successful fusions, but usually you only hear of the Unsuccessful ones.
Pray about it, then decide.
Good luck & God bless!
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