Hi Mac,
Welcome and thank you for your eloquent introduction. I’ll respond to a few of your questions:
1. I am active and pain-free now, almost seven years post-op. I was lucky to have only one diseased level, and a partial corpectomy that removed all of the diseased tissue that might have caused residual, post-op pain. I have no physical limitations whatsoever; and I’ve shoveled more snow this season than I care to admit.
2. The Charite and the ProDisc have the most history and largest studies to show efficacy. Now that you are a member, you can (and should) review as many post-op topic stories as you can; there are now more than 450. But people are considerate enough to describe their procedures in their topic titles to make browsing easier for newbies.
3. Your probably saw this important topic already, but here it is in case you’ve not read all the pages:
http://www.adrsupport.org/forums/f51...ications-9620/
There’s more, but I’ll defer to the other helpful members to address some of your other concerns…