[Artificial Disc Replacement / Lumbar] Peter's Story two M6-L

[Rob]

What do you mean frozen surgery?
Did you end up doing epidurals eventually? I am 5 month POST ADR. So maybe after 6. And yes to some extend Bone growth is the same thing with ADR as with Fusion.

Hi Peter,

I was diagnosed with tendonitis in my shoulder from an older minor injury in January, 2-month prior to my ALIF. The pain continually got worse after surgery. It got to a point where I could sleep for very long without waking up and realizing my shoulder pain was the culprit.

The "Frozen shoulder" developed from the tendonitis in April, about 4-weeks post-op from back surgery. Frozen shoulder is when you can't raise your shoulder past a certain vertical position. I couldn't raise it more than 90 degrees! Not being able to raise it past this position wasn’t because of the pain, it physically would go beyond 90 degrees!

The shoulder surgeon, recommended by my back surgeon (different practice), explained that “frozen shoulder syndrome” is when scar tissue from an injury to the sheathing around your muscle and tendon creates an adhesion and adheres to the muscle and prevents it from extending.

He noted that there are three stages of Frozen Shoulder Syndrome.

1. Painful freezing stage – this stage can be very painful (and it was!).
2. Frozen stage – typically preventing you from raising it more than 90 degrees.
3. Thawing stage – where you slowly get the range of motion back

He went on to explain that this only affects 3-5% of the population, usually people over 40 and more common in woman. The good news is that it rarely requires surgery and if left untreated it will eventually resolve itself on its own in 1½ - 2 years (really!) and will likely never come back.

He wanted to give me a cortisone injection to reduce the inflammation and pain. However I already knew from my conversation the previous week with my back surgeon that a cortisone injection was out of the question. He then noted that with PT the frozen shoulder should resolve itself in 6-9 months.

It did resolve itself in 8-9-months. I can now raise my arm 180+ degrees over my head. Still have some minor pain from the tendonitus but not too bad...

If you Google “Froze Shoulder Syndrome” there’re a lot of articles about it.

Regards,


Rob

[Rob]

[QUOTE=petrkr;26359]What do you mean frozen surgery?
Did you end up doing epidurals eventually? I am 5 month POST ADR. So maybe after 6. And yes to some extend Bone growth is the same thing with ADR as with Fusion.[/QUOT

...yes, I did finally get an injection. I had to wait for my 12-week post op appointment. This is when my surgeon confirmed that the hardware was still in place (x-ray), bone growth was on schedule (CAT scan), lifted all pysical restriction, lifted the NSAID restictions and told me I no longer had to wear the back brace. He also gave me an Rx for PT and the 'all-clear' to go ahead with the injection.

I was in the shoulder surgeons office two days later. It took a couple of days for the pain from the injection to wear off and then it was REALLY good! Still had frozen shoulder but virtually no pain!:^)

The injection lasted quite a while and wore off after 3-4 months as I recall...