Here we Go...ADR L5/S1 in February

[ouch2]

Hi everyone, Just wanted to introduce myself and let you know a little about my story. I injured my back in the spring of 2010. I herniated my L5/S1, bulges at L3-L5, stenosis, moderate facet hypertrophy. I tried all the conservative measures, while getting multiple opinions for the first year. The surgeons opinions ranged from discectomy to fusion. Last July I had a two level discectomy/lami.

It was not successful at all and I continued to deteriorate. I have nerve damage in my foot, walk with a cane, am in pain 24/7 and have partial footdrop.

I am now scheduled to have an ADR(Maverick) at the L5/S1 level. I am very excited but also very scared.

Wanted to reach out to others, hear their experiences, and share mine.
Hope that everyone is having a pain reduced day!

Karen

[ajj1001]

Welcome to the forum. Its good you have exhausted the other options before going ahead with such a big surgery. I was pretty much pain free a few weeks after the op (i had a two level ADR), however i found the anterior part of the op pretty hard to recover from. It did help me to think of how long it had taken to get so disabled before the op and then form a realistic timescale for recovery ie i had my first big painful prolapse in 2000 leading to my op in 2002 so it would take 2 years to recover back to where i had been. This pretty much proved to be the case, I returned to work in 2004. I did have some permanent nerve damage and motor function problems. This wasn't too bad as at least I wasn't in pain any more.