Hey everyone,
I got turned on to the site from another member that had gone to asia for surgery, I've just glanced over a few things on the site and i'm very excited to finally find a place with good support and info on ADR.
I fell from a ladder 3 1/2 years ago and the pain began. Diagnosed with buldging disc DDD at C5,6 and C6,7 with 80% of my pain in the neck and 20% in the arms, numbness and pain on both sides and numbness about 50/50 neck and arms. Since my Discogram they told me that I have pain becuase i have what is called:
"Discogenic axail neck pain with buldging disc and DDD"
(can I get a cup of coffee)
Like most of you have gone through the horror of dealing with doctors and many test. Right away I was told that my injuries were not serious enough to cuase the pain that I was having
so I began the long painful dealings with my insurance plans idea of helping me. First test: x-rays, Mri, Ct. Physical's by at least 4 doctors which took about 6 months then becuase i'm still having pain, a 12 week pain management class to help me consitrate my way out of pain. Still in pain so lets try drugs
helps but not my idea of help. next was cordison injections and then epidural injections. epidurals helped but only short term.
So last year I went to my doctor and said I don't care what your telling me I want some help and I need to get some relief and get off of the drugs. So again with all of the test and Meeting with Nuerosurgeon. The first Nuerosurgeon that I met with told me that becuase most my pain is in the neck that they could fuse the two disc but he didn't give me much hope in it working for me, he told me that I did have two buldging disc but they are small and not pushing on my nerves enough to cuase all of the pain I'm in. Both disc are degenerated but they could be worse
I asked him about ADR and he knew of another surgeon in my plan that had an ADR done in Europe and had preformed one ADR surgery. So I went to see him.
He spent an 11/2 hours with me telling me just the oposite that he had went to europe becuase he was told the same thing about his neck and he didn't want his neck fused. Unfortunatly for me the FDA hasn't approved a two level disc surgery. He told me that he would go off label and do it with the new bryan or prodisc which at that time he thought would be available. So again Unfortunatly for me he asked me to do a Discogram to figure out if my pain was coming from one or both of my injured disc so that if it was only one he would'nt have to go off label. That was the worst test ever and my pain level has increase since that test. Anyway since then He has backed out of the surgery saying that he can't go off label and i've seen another surgeon that told me the same and my insurance won't let me go out of my plan to have an off label surgery.
I have decided to go overseas and have the surgery which will cost about
30K which i'm still trying to come up with but I've been told that having it done here in the states by surgeons that will do it off label is over 100k. The other plus is that the surgeon that will do my surgery has done close to 200 ADR surgeries.
I noticed that some on the site made refference to getting their insurance companies to reimburse them for their overseas ADR surgeries. This is probably the exception rather than the rule and I have Kaiser Insurance and they want everything done in house.