1. Please ask for a copy of your pre and post-operative discectomy MRIs for use with the next surgeon, if you choose that path.
2. True, patience makes a difference. Two (2)-year results appear to be the objective in the FDA IDE trials. However, discectomy w/o a more immediate results makes one wonder. You need the pre-operative MRI report from the radiologist. An example from the radiologist might be "lateral recess osteophytes". The surgeon's operative report might then state "remove lateral recess osteophytes".
3. The Primary care physician opinon is interesting, at least a point-of-view was offered. My primary care phys. was cautious to offer none.
4. I vote with you, "off pills yesterday". There are trade-offs and no back operation is perfect as the surgeon needs access to make anything happen.
5. Please do no convince yourself yet that you need a multi-level ADR/TDR without (understandable) diagnostics. You may be asked to get a discography to identify the pain source.
Multi-level ADR/TDR is OK+, but the more levels involved with surgery increases the risk of complications and decreases ... blah blah
Look at UCTV and the P.Mummameni / D.Chou video if you have the time. They spend more time discussing issues than most office visits with surgeons,
http://www.adrsupport.org/forums/f50...-89-min-11534/
Quote:
Originally Posted by danleggett
I almost posted a reply to wcwalker because my story sounds similar to me (without the neck for now). I'm not going back to the nuero that did my discectomy because he oversold the results and then never seemed to want to explain or even show me the post op MRI.(1) Just told me to be patient.(2)
It's now been a year and the pain is getting a bit worse. When I brought it up, Primary care doc says ADR sounds like a good choice but he doesn't seem to be fully engaged on the subject(3). Maybe it's just me, but my confidence in docs is way down since I've had to spend more time with them lately. Seems I'm missing a link between my primary care guy and a good surgeon who can do a multi-level ADR if required.
So my immediate plans are to get a cervical MRI on 10-2-12 to find out maybe why I've had a headache for 2 months and then get a referral to Vanderbilt Med where I hear they do ADRs, tho I don't yet know how often. I think I will have to go up the usual ladder if I have any hope of getting BCBS-TN to pay anything for ADR. but other than that I'm ready to be out of pain and off pills yesterday(4).
How does one get objective opinion from a US doc when a muti-level ADR should at least be part of the conversation?(5)
|