Back surgery. Anyone had it?

[AaronP220]

Just found out that my back is, for a lack of better term, completely wreck. My L and T areas have herniations, disk bulges, indentations, stenosis...and I'm only 28.

Has anyone had surgery to correct this stuff? Never really been under the knife before. Surgery to me is super glue and electrical tape.

[GOST]

My Dad had some vertebrae fused after a hang glider accident and he gets along fine. I personally haven't had back surgery but have been under the knife a lot, it's not that bad. I've had 2 ACL reconstructions, 2 meniscus removals, hernia repair, ruptured intestine, internal abdominal scar tissue removal, several cyst removed, left index finger reattached, a septoplasty and my appendix removed. My wife says I like to have surgery right after I get her pregnant.

[GOST]

I've only have 2 kids so the pregnancies and surgeries are not directly related.

[baboon]

No back surgeries myself, but if recovery is like foot surgeries I would avoid it. Good news is your in Houston & a 2nd or 3rd opinion will come pretty easy depending on your insurance.

[FortTom]

Close...last OCT I had 2 herniated disc's (have no idea how it happened) in my neck and had plates and screws placed between 3 vertebrae. Actually the surgery and recovery wasn't that bad. The bitch has been a 5lb. lifting limit until Jan 15. Went back to Doc and it was lifted....to 15 - 20 lbs. I have a brand new build to test fire, and am cautious about going to the range. Am taking it slow though, and listening to the Doc this time. Have tried to comeback from another surgery once, too soon, and ended up screwing things up. But, pain has been minimal, and am allowing the Doc's advice to sink into my thick skull.

FT

[UWone77]

I just came across this thread... I know this is a general blanket statement, but if you can avoid back surgery and go with rehab/physical therapy first. Then do that. Back Surgery is such a crap shoot. My dad is still jacked up from a back surgery from 30 years ago, and a couple of the guys on the dept are never the same. In fact one had to quit the job all together because of a botched back surgery.

My wife who is an MD recommends to avoid it if you can, but obviously, that's not always the case. Good luck Aaron!

[WHSmithIV]

I had back surgery around 22 years ago UWone77. In my case i had a crushed disk in my spine. since it was in between my 5th and 6th vertebrae they went in through my neck with a very small incision and used a laser to cut out the disk and remove the pieces using a fiber optics camera. Had to stay in the hospital for 10 days but that was only because some of those days were vacation days in Finland where the surgery was done.

It really depends on where the damage is as to how they'd have to fix it. Lower back areas are more difficult than upper back areas. Removal of one disk isn't a problem because over time the 2 vertebrae basically fuse themselves together without a disk between them. That's how the neurosurgeon explained it to me.

I was just in my early thirties when they did mine and have never had a problem with it since so you should be fine. It's more worry about going under the knife than the recovery will actually be.

I was out doing pullups on the pipe on the hospital 2nd floor porch where my room was to check and see if my right arm worked again because it sure wasn't working before the surgery - one of those disk pieces was pressing into my spinal cord. Kept asking when I'd get to see the physical therapist about how to rebuild the strength in my arm. Took 5 days before she came around. She told me not to be doing too much exercise for the next 6 weeks. Didn't have the heart to tell her I'd been doing pull ups on that pipe for 4 days already.

The same evening after the surgery I called my wife and had her bring me a medium pizza since they weren't giving me crap to eat. Had my brother bring me a sub sandwich too. Nurses came in and saw me chowing down on all this stuff with it actually being kind of hard to swallow, they shook their heads and simply left

[WHSmithIV]

My best advice is get it done now while you're young. I had to have messed my back up somewhere around your age and it was 4 or 5 years before my right arm simply quit working. Couldn't even reliable hold a cup of coffee with it. Get it fixed now while the body is young enough to heal quickly.

[Barnzy]

Had spinal surgery twice (01 & 09) and I'm about to have it done again. The first 2 times were very conservative, hemilaminectomys and microdiscectomies. L3/L4 and L5/S1 both got it once, and L4/L5 got hit twice. My next one, which will be soon (2-3 weeks or so) will be a disk replacement and fusion of L4/L5. My suggestion to anyone considering it is to avoid it if at all possible. Make sure you exhaust all other options before resorting to surgery, cause once they cut you back there, it'll never be the same again.

Good luck the the OP and anyone else having back issues.

[Txfilmmaker]

I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV... If it won't hurt to wait, I would do yoga and anything else I could to strengthen your core and stretch your muscles. Google: Pete Egoscue and Pain Free living. I hope this helps you. It is helping me.

[Hmac]

Every case is different. The decision as to whether surgery is the right choice depends on a lot of variables, one that is far better left between you and your spine surgeon. Resist the temptation to base your treatment based on anecdotes from a gun forum on the internet.

Having said that, it is true that in many cases it's best to steer away from surgery.

[WHSmithIV]

Every case is different. The decision as to whether surgery is the right choice depends on a lot of variables, one that is far better left between you and your spine surgeon. Resist the temptation to base your treatment based on anecdotes from a gun forum on the internet.

Having said that, it is true that in many cases it's best to steer away from surgery.

What Hmac says is very true. If it's not absolutely necessary and there is another way, go for it. In my case I had no choice because the disk in my spine was broken and crushed with pieces sticking into my spinal cord. It came out in 23 pieces. I wouldn't have had the surgery otherwise. An MRI is what showed what the problem was. If you are at all unsure that you need it, get another or 2 or 3 opinions from other doctors and surgeons for sure.

[Hmac]

Of the many reasons to have surgery, those involving fusion are the trickiest. Fusions are done because the operation necessary to relieve the impingement on the nerve root canal (laminectomy) weakens or destabilizes the vertebral body. If we're talking about simple disk extrusion with impingement, then a simple diskectomy is appropriate. That can have immediate and total relief of symptoms, often with little more than an outpatient operation through a 1/4 inch incision and pretty much immediate return to work. OTOH, it's often true that just leaving the extruded disk alone will have the same result as it dessicates and shrinks over the succeeding few weeks. So diskectomy tends to be reserved for those cases where symptoms just don't improve on their own. Diskectomy with fusion is done when the problem is a disk extruding and compressing the nerve root in a canal already-narrowed by arthritis or bone spurs.. In that case just removing the disk doesn't help, you have to open up that boney canal too, then fuse the bones to maintain vertebral stability. The problem is that fusing two vertebral bodies tends to add more pressure to the vertebral joints above and below the fusion making them more likely to develop arthritis later. any competent spine surgeon will tell you that diskectomy with fusions have a pretty fair possibility of only giving partial or temporary improvement of symptoms. The days of automatically recommending surgery for disk herniation are gone. Studies over all those years have shown that the success rate of such surgery isn't substantially better than no surgery at all. The reason to see a spine surgeon, however, is because there are some situations where surgery is clearly helpful. You aren't going to get that question answered on the internet.

I agree, second or even third opinions on getting back surgery done is a very reasonable idea.

[WHSmithIV]

In my case it was up high in my spine so it was the best option and as Hmac has pointed out so well There area lot of potential ramifications. The lower down in the spine that the problems are significantly increases the possibilities for later problems. Think about it logically. The first 6 or so vertebrae in your spine below your neck support the least amount of weight than the rest of the spine does. The farther down you go, the more weight the spine has to support. That's why our spinal bone structure get's thicker the lower you look. As Hmac succinctly points out, you need to understand exactly what the plans are, what relief you may get IF you have surgery and what potential later on situations could occur. Do you REALLY need surgery? If not, don't get it.

Prolapsed disks are not uncommon - they don't require surgery either usually. Those are commonly referred to as a 'slipped disk' and they can be moved back into place without surgery.

Lastly, keep in mind that there are way too many unnecessary surgeries done because too many doctors and surgeons want to make more money. Be careful. Surgery is not something to choose lightly. I have been under the knife twice. Once was for my back surgery and the 2nd time 2 decades later was because I destroyed part of the tendon in my left shoulder a few inches from my neck. That had to be cut open, fibre wire had to be spliced into the tendon and rotator cuff surgery done so it could heal. I literally tore that tendon apart doing some work and my left arm stopped working.

I don't recommend surgery for anyone who doesn't desperately need it. Just ask the nurses who were in the both hospitals how much I hated being there.

[Hmac]

Lastly, keep in mind that there are way too many unnecessary surgeries done because too many doctors and surgeons want to make more money.

A commonly held belief, and one that does a significant disservice to the majority of doctors and surgeons out there. In most cases, it's a matter of there being no other options known at the time to relieve the patient's symptoms. For years, decades, it was thought that laminectomies were helping the majority of those people. It's only been over about the last decade that evidence-based medicine has shown many of those, and other, operations to be either unnecessary or not as helpful as was thought. Until there was a common culture of data-sharing, the computer systems to do it, and a broad-based mechanism for measuring and comparing surgical outcomes that this information has come to light. It's easy, if not a little cynical, to believe that surgeons just want to operate for the money. That's pretty much bullshit in my experience. There is nothing that makes a surgeon's life more miserable than a series of unhappy patients, and the majority of surgeons are more than busy enough fixing the people that they can fix without having to make their lives more stressful by operating on those they can't.