Hi,
I am new to the ADR Support site and I've been amazed by the amount of information available here and the level of help and support members provide to each other.
I need your advice in helping me decide on my next step but before I do that let me introduce my case:
* 10 years of lower back pain (L5/S1 herniation)
* Physical therapy, chiropractor, spinal decompression (DRX9000 and traction) didn't help
* Microdiscectomy and laminectomy Dec 2009
* Reinjured myself 3 weeks after surgery with shooting pain in my left leg
* epidural and selective nerve root injections didn't help
* MRI I did post surgery injury showed that I do have herniation and narrowing disc space but surgeon said that it will get better with time
* Surgeon recommended pilates and inversion table and if nothing helped we will assess my options
* leg pain is much better but my foot still hurts - actually it feels like sunburnt
* I have back pain especially when I stand for a long time like an hour or more
* When I wake up in the morning, I don't have any pain at all but after I start walking and doing activities I feel the pain/numbness/tingling traveling down my left leg until it settles in my foot
* Sitting makes my leg pain worse
I am an active person and I do currently work out (pilates, running, weights, hiking etc) but with leg and back pain. Saw the surgeon couple of months ago and decided to do disc replacement on my L5/S1 (Prodisc - L). My other discs are fine but L3/L4 is little dehydrated.
Insurance approved the surgery and all I have to pay is $250 (if I push surgery to next year I'll have to pay 10% surgery of the cost of surgery due to new insurance). My surgery is scheduled on Dec 13, 2010 and I am on the fence (hence my username
). Lots of my friends and family are concerned due to the risks of the surgery. There's no guarantee that I will feel 100% after surgery especially after reading some of the people's experiences on this site.
So my question is, should I go ahead and take risk and do it? Or since my pain is manageable should I suck it up and postpone or cancel surgery until pain is totally unbearable?
Thanks for your help.
ps: I will be seeing couple more surgeons for second opinion and one of them is Dr Yu-po Lee who is the sidekick of Dr Steven Garfin of UCSD