Hello,
I have never posted on this site before, but I read the posts regularlly, and find it very interesting and informative.
I had a spinal fusion l4 l5 with hardware on March 9, 05, I had a
herniatedHerniated nucleus pulposus disc, and slippage of the spine. At 6 weeks post op, I started having problems with sciatic like pain, (terrible burning pain in lower back and butt) pain worse than before surgery. My doctor put me on
neurontin with no help, and at 3 months he put me on an anti-inflamatory, which has helped some, but I am concerned about taking it this early, that it may interferre with my fusion. I also have alot of pain when I try to stretch my piriformis muscle in the area of that muscle and I wonder if that is the problem.
I am wondering if this is
normalNormal saline flush after the type of surgery I had. I have a appointment with
PMPremenstrual syndrome
Relieving pms in about 3 weeks.
One last thing, I started having alot of trouble with my feet along with my back problems. They
burnAirway burn
Burn, blister - close-up
Burn, thermal - close-up
Burns
Burns - resources
Eye burning - itching and discharge
First degree burn
Heartburn
Heartburn prevention
Minor burn - first aid - series
Painful swallowing on the bottom (I have been checked for neuropathy, and don't have that), and also the balls of my feet hurt really bad when I walk, and I was wondering if all that could be from the back problem, and may get better along with the other
nerveNerve biopsy
Nerve conduction velocity problems from compression.
I would appreciate any advice. Thanks
I knew when my neck was broken, and they told me nothing was wrong...Now without any care, medication, or tests, everyday is hell for me and my family...
It took some hot shot spine specialists a year to find my ruptured disc, if they would have done a CT scan first it would have shown... on the MRI they only read it as a lesion of some sort at the L5 location even reading the MRI backwards YES it can be done...
I have had over 19 injections done to my tailbone and butt cheeks, the treated it as SI problems... SI blocks done at the hospital into each side... an L5 Nerve block with NO help whatsoever...
Finally after a year they did a discogram and I would NOT for the life of me wish that test on my worse enemy even. Needless to say it's only gotten worse the past 5 yrs.
I've had an L5/S1 fusion (8" scar tailbone on up), with the bolts and rods moving, never fusing, somehwere between month 4 and 8 a titanium bolt completely sheared off!! No xrays were taken from month 3 on... nope, they tried every drug imaginable to ease the pain, made me go back to work, had me wear a TENS unit, a bone stimulator my god I was a walking machine!
Surgery #2 at month 9 to try to remove the remaining hardware.
Leaving 3/4 of a bolt/screw now in my body for the rest of my life causing pain whenever it rains/snows, etc. 3rd surgery was a whole year later, finally a differen doc, diff hospital, he did it laparscopically <sp> and inserted metal cages after cleaning up the bad disc and remaining tissue that had now moved to the right and bulging there causing more pain the past year.
Every single minute of my life is pain. I have not had a day below a 6 out of 10. I have been on every drug that Jerry Lewis has been and then some. My poor stomach the past 5 years survives off crackers of any sort and gingerale.
This week they add a new pill to my aresenal of locked up meds. At age 43, how am I to have a life??? Do I eventually lose my home cuz I can hardly sit a few hours to work (sedentary job of course!). No one seems to understand.. disability insurance thru works think I should be up and running around, well standing is a bit better but only temporarily until the pain down my legs starts up all over again. Laying on my side is the ONLY relief somewhat to this nitemare.
The PM&R doctor who manages my meds just keeps doing one to the other. Who or what doctor should be the one managing the new pains, the new inability to sit on my right butt cheek now as the pain there has gotten so much worse. How about my knees now that can hardly move as they have been my rock at the times that I cannot sit I have had to kneel or squat to get thru the 4 hours a day I do work 4 days a week...
No one has ANY answers for me and I feel sooo lost. I have ready every article imaginable that I can find anyways online. Jerry's story, when the docs mention a morphine pump my heart gets scared... my stomach can hardly handle anything new...yet I don't lose weight? My blood pressure is still good, my asthmas is still under control, it's just the dang pain... minute after minute, even after I sit here typing this I have had to wiggle from one butt cheek to the other. Sitting is my absolute worse, as well as driving. I have not slept on my back or stomach for more than 10 minutes in over 5 years, this lady is soo tired... I only get about 4-5 hours a sleep a nite, yes the docs know this, yes I have ambien for those nites, but I don't wanna take 'one more pill'... I'm feeling very desparate for some answers or even where to go (dang as the tears well in my eyes right now).
I am just looking forward to the end of my day here and heading home to once again lay on my side for an hour after I take my 'noon' pills.
Thanks...again I pray none of you ever have to go thru my hell.
I had my fusion a year ago. I never fused and one of the screws is loose. 2 Drs. have said I need ro re-do the fusion and change out the hardware. They said that if I don't, it is possible the screw can break off. But, today my insurance (W/C) has said they aren't convinced that I need a 2nd surgery. Now I am really getting scared that the screw will break off and cause worse problems.
I am sorry you are going through this as well and I am praying for relief of the pain for all pain sufferers on this board.
Lorie
I have terrible pain down both legs that radiates from my waist down to the pads of my feet. I have muscle jerks like the jerks you have right before you fall asleep all day and night. I was having severe muscle jerks about 300 times a day and am taking medicing to slow them down. It is now about 100 - 150 a day and some of them are really hard.
I am taking a Duragesic patch at 100 mcg/every 3 days and 4X Lortab-10/day along with Percoset as a breakthrough pill for when it gets real bad. Plus a host of other pills. I have severe depression and severe chronic fatigue. I do not like going anywhere because I feel so miserable.
I am very fortunate because my wife truely loves me and supports me and I have an awesome Son. If it were not for that and my faith in God, I would no longer be here. I thought this kind of suffering was only meant for those already in Hell. Not for the living. I oftentimes cry myself to sleep during the day or late at night because the pain is so severe. I also live my life with pain rarely going below a 7 and more often stays around an 8 and occasionally going to a 10. I have even passed out a couple of times from pain.
I hardly eat at all. I never get a full nights sleep. I am nauseaus all the time and I always feel like I am just slowly dying. Although I would NEVER do it, the thought of suicide is a daily/hourly though.
My legs ache. My legs have severe sharp pain that goes all the way to my ankles on the side, sometimes down the front and ALWAYS down the back. My legs always tingle and when I walk over 150 - 200 feet, my legs feel like I am trying to walk through a bog. I have never been able to walk any faster that 2.2 MPH on the treadmill at PT for more than 4 minutes.
I feel so useless as my family has to do everything at the house now. We had to sell our dream home because I thought we could loose it as it would be better to sell than to loose it. We live in a shack now and I can't even mow the yard. I was always the one who did the heavy stuff outside and my wife and I were always looking forward to doing yard work together planting plants and trees. Now I am just stuck in a useless body.
The Pain Management doctor says if he can;t get a handle on the pain within another 6 months or so he will look at implanting a morpheme pump. The Workers Comp Dr. I was seeing made me work for 9 months with this injury until I sued to see another doctor who had no stake in this injury. He immediately took me off work and 4 months later I had the first suegery (lower back) then 12 days later had the neck surgery. Next month will be a year since my first surgery. I really thought I would be running by now. Heck, I can't even drive a vehicle!
So after just about every pain pill and Tens unit out there, we are just about ready for the Morpheme pump.
I wish you all well and I am glad there is a forum where we can spill out guts and get things off my chest.
Sob story, after sob story. Sorry, can't help but being a bit synical. It helps to vent. I have a fusion at the L4-L5 and L5-S1 levels. I was 30 when I went through with the surgery. The day after surgery I woke up feeling worse than prior to the surgery, and it has never improved. Now I have pain that actually makes me groan out load in public. I can't help it. It hits me like baseball bat. I howl out load and cry like a little girl. I used to play Rugby and was prep football star. I know tough. I've been tough, just as everyone who has gone through this experience is. We are the toughest SOBs walking the face of the earth. Remember that God doesn't gives us what we can't handle no matter the hell we think we can't live through. Even though sometimes things seem bleak, I believe God is with us and watching over us at all times. It could be he is carrying us through what we think is the hardest time of our lives.
What the medical community fails to understand is that tough has limits. I tell my wonderful, beautiful wife, that Navy Seals and other special forces soldiers ar trained to ignore pain, for a short period of time. I want to see one of them deal with this type of pain for 4 years. Anyone can be tough for awhile, but eventualy you reach that point where you can't take it anymore, and then your body somehow finds a way to increase the pain even more than you could ever imagine.
I'm 34 now and new MRI's and CTs show that the L3-L4 disk is degenerative. What the Dr. failed to tell me was is that the rest of my spine would have to absorb the burden of the fusion. Meaning the L3-L4 , above my fused area, has bee taking the brunt of the friction and motion in my spine since the surgery. In medical terms they call this staircasing. If I have surgery on the L3-L4 then the L2-L3 will absorb the weight and burden of my lumbar spine and may eventually need surgery. Since fusions only last 10-15 years this means I could expect another surgery should I live into my fifties.
I'm also beginning to wonder if the hardware, specifically the pedical screws, are starting to work their way out of the bone and thus out my back.
I don't know about the rest of you, but my experience with doctors has not been positive. They look at me sideways when I say I need more pain medication. They refuse to support the pain I'm in. The government, DEA, society has them so scared to prescribe anything more than arthritis relief medication that I want to cry. It is always a fight to get the bare minimum. They laugh when you say the pain medicine just dulls the pain and doesn't rid you completely of the pain. Many doctors are unaware or refuse to acknowledge what breakthrough pain is. Like many of you, I long for pain free lifestyle. I long for a full night sleep.
Who will help us fight for our rights? Who will recognize that we have the right to live pain free, whatever this means. So far I've never met an advocate on this issue. I guess the insurance companies and government have more money than those of us who are hurting.
My family doctor will prescribe oxy but a very limited amount and he has never heard of breakthrogh pain. It is not his policy to support breakthrough pain. In our area pain management doctors all went out of business. The only one in now is a guy who supplies what he thinks is best for you, not what actually works for. Now we live in the Olympia area and this is about 100,000 people in this area and only one pain management doctor who is new, but still wants you to conform to his own preferences, not yours.
Now my pain has escalated to a new level and my disability with the state was approved but only for two years. I fall into the what insurance companies call a predetermined category for back problems. They have it all mapped out and certainly do no take it on a case by case basis. I am suppossed to be able to work a sedentary job. Except I can't sit for more than 20 minutes without excrutiating pain.
I don't want a support group.
I want a doctor to take care of my pain and provide me with a specialist to give me hope that I can resolve my back pain. I want my disability company "The Standard" to understand I can't work sedentary work and take care of my like they originally promised me.
I guess I just live in a world that doesn't exsist and should come backe to earth and face the reality that I, once again, will not get what I want.
Does this sound familiar to any of you? If it does, my vote is to start a website and begin deciding how we can control our own future and own fate. Maybe we all go into business together? Maybe we all open our own pharmacy and buy from just this one source, but please, I refuse to go through the rest of my life hoping upon hope that doctors and insurance companies are going to change, or that I'll find the right one to make things all better.
Feel free to email me at:
Brian McGinty
***@****
I have been told additude is the best medicine, well I am trying to maintain a good attitude, but I feel like I have hot knives stabbing me in the leg. I rarely eat, because I am nauceous continually. I have intrests in life, depression is not the issue, and I DESPISE pain pills, I deal with pain sometimes rather than take them, because I know LORTAB can do liver damage and I want to live a long, healthy life.
I still need pain medicine....something that wont make me sick, will somebody please help me. I am desperate for amswers.....and I hurt continually.
I just saw my NS Monday and am facing my 5th and 6th neck surgery. I have had 3 anterior surgeries and 1 posterior. I currently have a plate at C4, 5 and 6, and another at 6-7. Posterior I have rods and screws at 4,5 & 6. Previously I had a plate at 3,4,5. The screws broke on that one, but luckily the fusion held at 3. They could not get one of the broken screws out.
Monday, the doc told me that the fusion at 6-7 did not take and the disks are slipping again. This has pulled one of the screws in the back and now it is no longer where it should be. He wants to go in from the front and re-do the fusion there, and the next day, go in the back and extend the rods to the top of my back.
Needless to say, I am scared to death. I can handle the front surgery, but the posterior surgery was the worst thing I have ever gone through. I have had 2 fusions with my bone, and 2 with bank bone. Neither method has proved successful. He is talking about using an artificial material along with bank bone for the fusion this time.
Any support or feedback would be soooooo appreciated. I am 48 years old, and I take 40=50 Vicodin a week, along with Robaxin & Flexaril.
God bless you all, and GOOD LUCK!
i had a fusion on L5-S1 sack in may 2005 still having pain and numbness in my big toe & the next 2 toes and at times it wil go up mt ankle and i have real sharp pain in the lower part of my left butox my doc. has me going to a Functional Capacity Assessment dose this mean i have to live with this
THIS IS THE TECHNIQUE FROM MY MYELOGRAM FROM AUG.2005
Thin section imaging with multiplanar reconstructions
FINDINGS: The thecal sac is filled with iodinated contrast per recent myelogram.
Overall vertebral body alignment to the L5- level is unremax:kable.. There is Grade I anterolisthesis of L5 on S1. with posterior fusion at the LS-Sl interspace. Of note vacuum disk phenomenon is present at the LS-SI level consistent with motion at this level.
At 11-2, no significant disk disease. Central car!al and foramen are widely patent with minimal facet arthrosis.
At L2-3, minimal disk bulge with widely patent central canal Neural foramen are widely patent as well.
At L3-4, bilateral facet arthrosis and ligamentum flavum hypertrophy are present. Central canal is widely patent. no significant foraminal compromise.
There is
At: L4-5, t..nera is minimal disk bulge effa.cing t.n.e ventral theca.l
sac. Posterior decompression with widely patent central canal. There is mild right.and mild to moderate left foraminal stenosis
-n..t LS-Sl, widely paten~ central canal status post-decompression There is se~Tere left and moderate right foraminal stenosis.
IMPRESSION: Multilevel degenerative disk disease with no central canal stenosis: Post-operative changes with widely patent central canal at the lower lumbar spine. Patient is status post-posterior fusion at LS-Sl with abnormal vacuum disk at this level consistent with motion. Bilateral foraminal compromised at L4-S and to a greater degree at LS-Sl as indicated above.
ANY HELP AT ALL
In September I went for a myelogram as suggested by my surgeon. All it would show was a "bundle" of nerves and scar tissue that my surgeon hoped a simple cortisone/steroid injection might help.
Well, it is mid-October and I have had TWO of these injections already and the pain hasn't budged. No matter what I do..lie around all day or take a simple jaunt out to the store, the pain still comes. I see my doctor next month, but I should've been returning to work by now. It seems that every trip to a doctor lends less and less hope. His only suggestion (injections) has failed and I'm still in excruciating pain and still not back to work. What is most frustrating is that the fusion worked, but now I have a problem no one seems to know how to solve.
He does have sciatica pain, so his activity level is still limited, but he's out of the hospital bed and at least able to get outside every day, that hadn't been the case until the pump. He has an ill-effect for the first couple of days after a refill for the body to get used to it, otherwise there is no side effect of the medicine. His liver seems to be doing fine (after years of pain meds), and he's more into life than I've seen in over 4 years.
It's definately worth a try. he's 45 and has a lot of years with this pump, but it's better than a lot of years without it. Now if we can get the sciatic side of it under control, we may have a shot at going dancing some nite!
I have had this problem for 6 years, I am 25 years old. After reading that so many people have had problems after surgery and my own doubts that I have I don't know what I should do.
I have pain every day, it's never ending. I take pain pills and muscle relaxers and it gets me through the day.
My surgery may be a little different from what others have had. They are using MAST (Minimal access spine technology) to do my surgery. Basically they will cut 4 incisions the size of a key hole and perform the Spinal Fusion.
I am worried that I will end up worse than I am now.
The way it works at the hospital I am getting surgery at is you go to your internist he gives you your meds and schedules you for all the tests. My neurosurgeon then reads results and so on. Like I said earlier my internist is a real jerk and he has said if I do not do this surgery he will not give me pain pills. Day to day life is not possible without pain pills. It's already hard enough to get the pain pills, I am sick of the funny looks I get and the doctors that tell me do you know how much this stuff goes for on the street (Like I care). I do not really want to be on them for the rest of my life either. It just seems like a lose-lose situation. It's very annoying to be treated that way. I used to work as a police officer. My only hope to go back to that is surgery. I am still working (at another job) I am toughing it out as much as I can.
Here is where my dilemma is, I am scared to death of this operation and if it fails I will have to still take meds and I could be worse off, If I do not do it then there goes the meds and that puts me right back where I started.
I guess I just need a friendly place to vent with people that understand and have the same problems. If anyone has any advice to offer that would be great. I am having a tough time making this decision.
~Bella
after reading your comment i have a few sugesstions:follow your heart and instincts
1. do not have surgery
2. try epidural injection
3. try ti-chi
4. try bio=feedback
5. try chriropractor
6. stay fit and exercise 4times a week especially weight training join a gym, hire a trainer
7. keep taking the pain pills
8. buy a heating pad and sleep with it under your back
9. keep your legs elevated at night
i had a spinal fusion L4.L5.S1 with cages and it took me almost 6 months or better to even walk right.
i would,nt suggest anyone your age to get this surgery.
i have had several problems since surgery that include numbness in toes and feet that they gave me epidural injections for, also when you walk, stand, sit too long your in just as much pain, then it takes days to get over that.
and the only other thing i know is once the doctors push you to have surgery they really don,t care after that!!
all theywant is that $20,000 dollar operation and thats it.
if your not satisfied with anything get another doctor and you tell them what you want to do before surgery and investigate every option there is before surgery there has to be something that might help.