Hi everyone!
I've been following this group since a while now and am amazed by the positive outcomes some people had after an ADR.
What brought me here is my degenerated disc at L5-S1 which suffered a recurrent herniation after an open microdiscectomy 10 months ago.
I never really felt ok after that surgery, actually I even felt and feel worse, and that's what held me back from having a revision. But my quality of life has in the meantime tremendously degenerated (as my disc 😃) and my back does not allow me for literally anything without some sort of pain both in the leg and in the back. Pain usually gets worse with activity and the only things left for me to do are PT exercises. Working full time is really hard unfortunately, and I'm anyway only doing an office job.
Looking for possibilities online has brought me to contact some ADR surgeons here in Europe and surprisingly all of them recommended an ADR at L5-S1. I'm saying surprisingly as even mentioning this to any of the surgeons in my area (Innsbruck, Austria) I received really negative reactions. Two of them instead recommend a L5-S1 fusion while one recommends a revision microdiscectomy. And that makes me wonder..
In any case, I can now survive OK during the day but my back feels ALWAYS off. There's not a moment that I don't feel there's something wrong with my back. I keep it very easy during the day, never in one position for more than half to one hour, no physical activity and no sports, only PT. Life pretty much sucks but I feel better than 3 months ago. I still miss out on more strenuous social events like cinema or long dinners and I guess events like longer trips or weddings will be far out of reach. Summing up maybe I'm not that bad but not that good either. The worst situation for making a decision