Back Surgery Question

Here's my back story. I have had low back pain since I was a teenager. As I got older the pain worsened and would come and go, like one injury after another. My back would just go out if I was bending over to pick something up without even getting to what I was reaching for. An osteopathic doctor would crack my back and put things back into place and I would get temporary relief. Then I started seeing chiropractors for the same thing and actually found a couple good ones that actually helped me for years. I had a bulging disc between L4 and L5, staying fit helped, and the chiropractor. I did anything to avoid surgery as I had heard horror stories about it. I always said that surgery would be a final option when the day came that I couldn't walk. That day came. I went to stand up from a seated position on the toilet and my leg gave out and I collapsed. My back felt kinda funny but no pain in my back. Then as the days passed the pain in my leg became excruciating, and what didn't hurt like hell was completely numb and didn't work. I couldn't lift my toes and I had a club foot, just dragged it basically. Went to my family doctor, mri was ordered, diagnosis was a herniated disc. Immediate surgery was recommended, and I was scared so I put it off and just did the narcotic pain pill thing for relief, became addicted to them and didn't even know it. So it wasn't improving and I had the surgery, a microdiscectomy. A small incision in my low back and they just shaved the disc off of the pinched nerve. when I woke up I could immediately feel my leg. I never had back pain from the injury until I woke up from the surgery, wow did I have back pain then. I knew I had to get of the drugs as they where masking what my body was telling me, if it hurts don't do it! I went through a drug withdrawal that made me understand why people are drug addicts, it was horrible. I had a 3 month recovery and walking was my only therapy, it took awhile to do that, had to learn how to walk again. But I did get better slowly, it really took about a year before I felt better and wasn't afraid of hurting my back again. I did a physical aptitude test for truck driving that was brutal, my muscles where sore for a week but my back was ok. In time I was able to resume weight training, walking, cycling, and a normal life. It has been about 10 years since the surgery, I consider myself pretty fit for a 56 year old man. I still exercise and try to take care of myself. Some exercises I don't do because they are hard on my joints and back, I do moderate weights with high reps. I can pick up heavy things and move them, I carried a 12" rotary table out of a guys shop when I purchased it, carried a semi truck brake drum across a shop, so I guess I am not feeble. I still run my chainsaw mill and do lumberjack work for fun and my hobby I had an excellent doctor and surgeon, I researched him. Years of low back pain is now gone! It was a life changing surgery for me, for the better. But also bare in mind that my procedure was minor compared to what some of the folks above went through.
My next hurdle is in a week I have to have surgery for a painful umbilical hernia, I hope that is as successful.
 
Agree with what was said earlier about not waiting to long, It seems once you let the nerves get damaged, then you do not get things back. by the time they finally did my neck they said I had lost over 20% use of my left arm and almost 30 Percent use of my right due to nerve damage. Still often have problems even opening jars. nerve pain, numbness and pins and needles in the back.
 
Lot of back problems on here. Yikes.
I had a disco-gram done a while ago. That was really fun and enjoyable. (Note the line about "sedation is not given" because they need to have you feel it and talk to them. http://www.spine-health.com/treatment/diagnostic-tests/lumbar-discogram-procedure

First Discectomy/Laminectomy in 2005. I blew out L4/L5 loading a passenger bag full of gold bars into the airplane. I was 39. Another surgery in the same spot in 2006. Third surgery in 2010 on L5/S1. Was supposed to have a fusion in 2013 but insurance denied it. Surgeries SUCK!
Had more cortisone shots than I can count on my back, knee (eventual surgery on it) and rotator cuff (also surgery on it later). The shots did absolutely nothing for me.

This is the main reason that I am now retired from my beloved career at age 51. I am going to lose about $1.5 million in remaining earnings because of this dang back.

My advice....lose weight, strengthen your core, eat well and stay active. Limit the pain killers that you take. I actually saw a psychiatrist about pain and he had me develop a way of dealing with the pain through mindfulness. Mind over matter in a sense and learning to accept levels of pain. Don't let it get you down. :)
 
7milesup said:
My advice....lose weight, strengthen your core, eat well and stay active. Limit the pain killers that you take. :)
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That is some of the best advise on here. I have done that very thing. Eat well, excersise, strengthen the core. My weight is always a battle though, lol. I'm not obese but just seem to always carry a belly. Abs and core are strong, and that really helps the back.
 
First I want to say , I had bad luck getting hit with what they called transverse myilitis. I went paralyzed from the waist down for no reason. Then surgery to find out why. Couldn't see any cause so they removed bone for my swollen spinal cord. The great surgeon left a spinal cord fluid leak. YUPP another surgery wanted I said no , no pain legs getting movement and feeling back. Insist on surgery after a week of spinal taps to drain off fluid from spine. Still leaking second surgery to seal leak only right no the bastard explored further and removed more bone. Wake up now I'm paralyzed from the neck down still leaking fluid YUPP. He's going on vacation ships me to Pennsylvania hospital to best neurosurgeon on east coast in 79, all the test painfully filled ones. He does third surgery in two weeks , skin graft from left leg used to heal leak in spine. He said he couldn't see the cause for all the scare tissue from the two prior operations. After that to Magee rehabilitation center for 4 months. At first I couldn't even hold my head up , but over the next year I got back to walking with a cane . Have drop foot on left leg so I thro and go for about twenty years then pain starts hyperflextion on knee , spurs on hip . Arthritis sets in and the down hill fall takes over. YUPP started falling then got where I couldn't get up ,so I used a scooter to do my walking till I couldn't walk to it . Shortly after the embolism took my walking . Now I'm in pain forever so I'm trying the shots . There's my back history . But before that I was a three hundred lb 6'4" tall muscle machine use to hauling plates weighing 300 lbs all day for seventy two hour work weeks. I got all the big work used a ten lb sledgehammer to do set ups on planers and VBM S. Made Forman on second shift after only a month at my new job , government contracts. Making missiles and rockets , lots of exotic metals . That's how I earned my formans job and nice raise plus incentives. I was a good strong worker till I got screwed.
I just thought this might clear up I wasn't a lazy fat boy. I worked long days into the night hunted and fished , farmed several plots . Never had a back pain till after the operations.
 
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Silverbullet, I hope you didn't think that was what I was implying because I wasn't. I was only saying that watching your weight and excising is a big help to keeping your body going. I can't even imagine what you have been through and I feel for you. My problems pale in comparison to what some of the folks here have gone through. I have seen friends that where mountains of a man like you that made me feel like I was standing in a hole when I stood next to them, when they shook my hand my hand would dissapeer in theirs. And yet they where taken down like you by some disease or unfortunate chain of events like yours. I'm at the age now where I am watching my friends pass away right before my very eyes, one by one. Some could have been prevented, some not, it was just there time. But my bucket list is not done, and if I can I will do the best to take care of myself so I can continue to enjoy the things I love to do. Please don't think that I was judging you, I was not and would not. I was just giving advice to those that might listen and benefit from it.
 
Woodtickgreg , I wasn't offended I was just saying it don't matter what you do , back problems can get you. Big or small. Skinny or fat. Only takes one misstep to twist or lift . But years in pain then to be in so much pain you can't move really sucks. I was and will always be a big man , by the time I was in eighth grade I was 6' tAll and 225 lbs , but I played every sport and weight lifted my entire teen years till I got married then I worked. I could pic up a Volkswagen beetle one end at a time and turn it sideways in a parking spot. Just a trick I use to play in high school. I could do it on a potty break . Never got caught
 
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