[annapurna]

There's not a whole lot of people weighing in so I'll try to give a more general perspective. True failures of ADRs, where you get worse than you were prior to the ADR, generally fall into (1) you had structural changes in your vertebrae from long-term misalignment and you shouldn't have gotten an ADR, (2) you had neural plasticity problems from prolonged years of pain and the ADR can't reduce your pain, (3) the surgeon puts it in wrong. There's a huge number of other problems, like allergenic reaction to the alloy used in the ADR, biofilms from infection, etc. but the three I quoted seem to be the most common problems.


You can get really good imaging and spend time with your surgeon talking about #1. #2 is a bit of crapshoot but that is the reason why it isn't always a safe decision to keep putting off surgery forever. #3 is the real open question. I can only say that you should pick the best possible surgeon that you have access to, trust, and can afford.


With all of that in mind, most people seem to be reasonably close to fully functional. You can witness the number of people who posted here prior to their surgery, a few posts afterwards, and seemingly dropped off to live their lives.


There's also a question of what's "functional." Laura has hypermobility problems and three unconstrained ADRs. She'll basically live the rest of her life trying to make sure her core is very strong to provide dynamic stabilization where her ADRs can't do that for her. So long as she's fit, her spine doesn't limit her. Should she get lazy for a while, she ends up paying for it with a week or so of aching while she regains fitness. She's not taken pain medication for her spine in over a decade.