[CDW321]

I will try and make this concise, though it seems like nearly all of us have long stories.
I'm a married woman in her early/mid 50s with a daughter in college. In the Spring of 2011, after a lucky life of very good health, fitness and no back issues, my strong and young dog yanked on the leash and my low back went out. In that split second my whole life changed. A few weeks after the low back pain started I began to get very painful muscle spasms that ran from my low back straight up my spine to my shoulders and neck, mostly on the right side. These spasms were and still are caused by sitting, standing and walking. Sitting is unbearable for me with low back pain compounding the spasms. I can handle standing and walking a bit longer but that will result in the same symptoms as well. My first Lumbar MRI indicated a "broad central bulge" at L5 S1 and a smaller bulge to the left at L3/4. I later came to understand that I had a large, central herniation that broke through the posterior longitudinal ligament at L5 S1.
I have been lucky to not have any leg pain so far. This truly was a very central herniation. Pretty atypical, I've heard.

When this all started, I was the co-owner of a very successful, 10 year old motion picture editing company in NYC. I had worked in this industry for 32 years in total. I continued to work for over a year in horrible pain. After 10 months I elected to have Microdisectomy surgery at HSS on my L5 S1. After surgery, the muscle spasms went away like magic for 6 weeks, at which time they came back gradually over a month. The low back pain remained and I never received any kind of an explanation or hypothesis about why the spasms left but came back. So the surgery failed but didn't leave me worse off. At the 16th month mark I went on leave from my business and eventually had to dissolve the company and go on private disability.

I have had further MRIs that revealed a number of herniations in my Cervical area, with no symptoms yet and a good report on my Thoracic spine. My HSS surgeon told me that I had degeneration in my L5 S1 but that he had seen much worse. He strongly advised me to not seek more surgery and try more pain management options and see a physiatrist. I asked him then about ADR and, looking back, I realize all I heard from him were the possible horror story, negative outcomes.

So for the next year until now I have shuffled from one specialist to another getting no answers, remaining in pain, completeing one useless PT regime after another and continually getting told that my MRIs don't look too bad. What all of these doctors (with the exception of my new pain management doctor) have blindly ignored is that I CAN'T SIT, STAND OR WALK for more than 30 minutes. I can't work or do much else.

I'm pretty fed-up and ready to move on to surgery as my last hope to least partially regaining my life. I've also come to the realization (as mentioned by Harrison in his presurgery advice) that doctors, especially surgeons from top rated hospitals, are sometimes more interested in protecting their reputations than taking any kind of risk to help an atypical patient.
I'm very excited to become part of this community. I have many questions and am happy to offer any info I have gathered over the past 2.25 years.