Back Injuries and Surgeries

Fusion is typically last resort from my understanding. They generally don't do hardware unless there's a stability issue of the associated vertebrae. One of my doc's seemed shocked that I didn't have any after seeing my MRI from early 2020.

Long-term opioid use has other detrimental impacts, like low Testosterone.

There are a lot of specious pain management people. The only injections I ever got that worked were done at the VAMC in Portland. One of the first I saw back in 2011 got prosecuted for fraud.

Before my 1st surgery in 2006, the only thing I did that helped my pain was deep-tissue massage, and I went 3x a week for 90min at a time.

Accupuncture I have also tried, and didn't have any success though other people have. My wife reported success in managing migraines with accupuncture.

Traction helps me, and not the Saunders home unit. I need the full-fledged winch-type. In lieu of having to go to PT office for that, using my custom back brace to increase intra-abdominal pressure works great to unload those spinal segments. It is hot, I can't drive in it or sit in any chair comfortably wearing it, so it is either wear it standing or laying down. It may seem dumb, but it works in my situation.

I have a friend who had a 3-level cervical fusion from the front. He said the recovery sucked, like way more miserable than anything he experienced previously in life. He's a contractor, and for him it was a necessity, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to continue to work.

Clint Smith of ThunderRanch here in Oregon went to Baylor University for a multi-level cervical fusion years ago. I remember seeing x-rays afterwards, he legit has a neck that looks like a Terminator skeleton now. Life-altering according to him, in a good way.

The only diagnostic test I would rather never do again is a Nerve Conduction Study/EMG. It sucked.

 

Loving all the info! Thank you all for your insights and experiences. Keep them coming!

 

So, an update here. My friend had the surgery for his back/neck but once the surgeon was in the discs were found to have hardened and wouldn't cut properly. They did what they could and had hoped it would resolve the debilitating pain he was suffering. That sadly is not the case. He toughed it out but Monday ramped everything up worse than before and he was back in the ER. After consult his surgeon apologized and said he had hoped it would provide relief, but he should have gone in from the front and done the fusion. The doc and my buddy were both shooting for avoiding super invasive as long as possible, but it's just not working.

He is scheduled for another surgery tomorrow/today for a fusion of the vertebrae. Before all this he couldn't move his neck much anyway, so at least loss of mobility won't be a huge change. I'm really hoping this is the fix, because this is breaking him. Toughest man I know, and it's crushing his will to persevere.

 

This is almost identical what happened to me - the discectomy in my case produced an instability because of the amount of material that they had to remove in order to decompress the nerve. I had an anterior approach fusion after that and it was immediate relief for me. Sounds like he has self fused in some areas. Hopefully they can decompress the nerve(s) enough to give him some relief and the fusion will stabilize his back…..I wish the best for him. Back pain and dysfunction effects so much of daily living activities and becomes debilitating physically and mentally. Here to hoping he wakes up in recovery with improved symptoms and a new perspective on life.