Hi Dan,
Congrats on your surgery and thanks for your well-written introduction. Your journey sounds similar to so many others from this community. And it’s great you got Aetna to cover it – choice is a beautiful thing, eh?!
Sitting tolerance after lumbar ADR (and sometimes cervical) is almost always a big problem. This seems to last months for most people. The longer you had DDD, the more levels affected, the longer it may take for the pain to go away. But there are always exceptions as there are many other variables that can affect your healing process.
It took me many months for my sitting pain to go away completely; but strangely, the process was not “linear.” Some days there was no problem and on others there was! It was odd.
I am glad you are familiar with the board. If you’ve not already tried this specific search, you’ll find many more info-nuggets that will address your question:
Go to search in the top navigation > Advanced Search > Keyword Search > Enter “Sitting tolerance” > Select Search in “ADR Surgical Outcome Forum”
There, you should find appr. 32 topics that relate to sitting tolerance. Hope this helps you now and with other questions in the future.
By the way, while your pain may subside after 2-4 months, some may linger. Try to be patient. I recall one instance I was driving in my car, more than a year my ADR in 2004 and thinking, “hey, my car seat is comfortable!?” So it really does take time for the human spine to adjust to the new biomechanics of new hardware…