Post surgery recovery - L5-S1 microdiskectomy, S1 Laminectomy

[armygirl46r]

Hi all--I got so much good info from this forum PRIOR to my surgery, I want to chronicle my recovery for others to learn from, too.  Thanks to all who have posted before me--your experience and your advice helped me prepare for my procedure and recovery.  Thank you.

--Hours 1-12 post-op---->  Pain Rx, intravenously--Dilaudid.  I was on PCA pump, a dose every ten minutes if needed.  Needed to pee a lot because the IV fluids and also I drank a lot of water--the anesthesia and pain Rx left me with cotton-mouth.  It was difficult to pee, which is to say, I didn't have the muscle control at first.  (The muscles were still "asleep", I guess.)  I did quite a bit of walking from bed to potty, which made my wound bleed.  My bandages had to be changed twice.  I had a hard time learning how to log roll the first few times.  ADVICE--The BEST way to get up and down from a sitting pos'n is to place all your weight on your HEELS--it forces your back to be straight and makes all your leg muscles work, taking the strain off your back.  Place your feet shoulder apart and point your toes out like a duck.  It helps--A LOT.  Or at least it did for me.

--Hours 12-24 post-op----> Pain Rx was changed to Toridol, by injection.  IV Rx changed to Morphine, PCA every 10 mins as needed.  The Dilaudid and anesthesia coming out of my body made me ITCHY!!!!  So I got benadryl in my IV to stop the itching.  Slept for a few hours, then woke up at 4am and couldnt get back to sleep.  Did a lil more walking, but not as much as the previous 12 hours.  Appetite was back with a venegence!  ;-D  Only hit the Morphine twice in the 12-24hour period--and once was just because it was there and I couldnt fall asleep!  LOL  But right before leaving the hospital 24 hrs post-op, I hit it three times in 30 mins because I had about a 30 min car ride ahead of me and just wanted the little extra pharmaceutical help for the ride.   Oh yeah--they gave me Colace to help loosen my stool and also IV antibiotics before I left.  (I started passing gas in the 12-24 hrs post op.)

--Day 2, post-op-----> Consitpation.  Not a lot of surgical or incision pain at this point.  Insomnia again at about 4 am.  (That has GOT to stop LOL!)  Got out and about at the grocery store.  Went to have lunch at pizza joint.  Was a lil scary at the grocery--wearing the brace under my clothes where people can't see it makes me nervous--afraid to get bumped or jostled, esp with lil kids running around.  Hypersenstivity to "touch", which is to say, I don't want people touching me, even my loved ones.  I just want to be "left alone" in that way.  I dont want hugs and I dont want hand or arm rubbing--my body is already hypersensitive at this point, I don't want more nerves "on alert."  (Ordinarily, tho, I am a touchy-feely person...but the last couple of days I just want to be left ALONE!)  Oh yeah, I am on Darvocet as needed for pain.  I took one before bed last nite, one this afternoon at lunch.  Took one just now (approx 2.5 days post-op) because muscle spasms are kicking in.  Dont know if its because I was sitting in chair awkwardly or because I couldnt get comfy sleeping on my back so i slept on side w/pillow tucked between knees for a couple hours.  in any casse, standing is best right now.

This is my experience so far.  Oh yeah, the smallest movements are the hardest (like, scooching into a car seat sideways, or up or down on the pillows to get comfy.)  If you have any advice or questions, feel free to post.  I'd be happy to offer any help and/or welcome advice.  

All in all, thus far, the recovery is fine.  I feel ok (considering) and the pain is really just localized.  And now it's time to get up because I've been sitting in this chair for waaay too long!  :-)

[zonk1001]

Surgery 11am January 2009.  Took him 30 minutes.  Woke and immediately knew the pain was gone.  He told me he took out a thumb sized chunk of my disc, and when he laid the nerve back into place it visibly relaxed and said 'ahhhhhh.'  

No pain medications since minutes after leaving recovery, left hospital that day at 5pm.  Incision about two inches long, had internal suturing and a layer of glue on the outside which I would shower with after 24 hours and pat dry.  

Never looked back.  Should have looked back.  

Doc told me on the phone to take it easy, be careful sitting, recline a lot, walk 3-5 miles daily, and not to sit for more than 25 minutes at a time for 3 weeks.  He told me not to sit more than an hour at a time, ever, that sitting causes the most intense disc pressure, to take stretch breaks.  

Doc told me in 3 months scar tissue will fill in and 85% of disc tensile strength will be back, I’d be able to resume activities more vigorously at that time, and would eventually be back to 100% after a year.  

I managed to follow his orders for a week.  Walked 3-5 miles per day, every day.  Rediscovering nature, life, feeling grateful and blessed to remember normalcy, I felt too good.  I stopped consciously following that great advice.  Stopped playing only songs about pain on my guitar.

It was a week of bliss post-surgery I’d had, and I disrupted it all by myself,  I still feel guilty sometimes for screwing up Doc Reedy’s good work until I’d had a chance to heal fully.

Unfortunately, I got to feeling so good I forgot, temporarily, that I needed to take it easy 3 months, and didn't carefully logroll into my car on the way to work one day, didn’t carefully move both legs at the same time, didn’t attempt to keep my core strong.  

It was that simple  Searing pain in the left leg again.  Pain that brought tears to my eyes again.  Guess the tough guy is human…  Oh no, here we go again.  Called Doc in a panic.  

Do the conservative stuff, he said.  Give it time.  Heal.  The surgery is always out there and hopefully you won’t need it.  

So I re-committed to myself again.

Saw an acupuncturist,  PT, massage, TENS, Prednisone for a week, kept with the exercise, stretching, and nutrition for the full year through January 2010.  And I found relief after a few months of steady commitment.

I recovered to full strength over the course of the year with lots of swimming and stretching and core strengthening and basketball and skiing and passionate lovemaking.  But I still sat for too long, periodically.  Much longer than an hour.  But I didn’t care because I was ‘all better now.’

Went back to skiing moguls, riding my mountain bike in the foothills, playing above the rim, and living fully.  And forgot that, even though I'm a tough guy, I'm not quite so tough anymore.

Until July 2011.  That’s 2.5 years from January 2009.  Then, I injured my back lifting too much weight doing some volunteer work with kids.  Back to Prednisone, PT, massage therapy, stretching, walking.  The condition worsened, aching every day.  

Then in September 2011 I made the apparently horrible mistake of stomping my foot too hard to get the cat out from under the bed.  It was like being transported right back to the time and place of the original injury.  Back to the hell of ineffective conservative treatments.  

Another MRI.  This time a Myelogram and CT scan in October as well.  Having the dye injected into my back for the procedures doubled the amount of nerve pain, apparently from the increased fluid pressure.  Confirmatory pinched nerve by L5/S1 bulged disc, plus bone spurs and interfering scar tissue from the first surgery.

My insurance company apparently decided I’d suffered enough and authorized surgery November 2.  It was a relief to stop taking the 800 mg of Ibuprofen every 4-6 hours that still did very little to alleviate pain.      

This time there was lots of scar tissue for Doc Reedy to move through.  It took an hour and 20 minutes.   10% of the disc came out.  Again, I’m all better in recovery, with slight left leg pain that dissipated over the course of a week.  Again walking 3-5 miles per day.  Much more careful getting in and out of my car, in and out of bed, engaging in daily life activities with a health dose of caution, wiser this time.  I hope. It will have been six weeks from my second surgery in about ten hours.  And every day is precious.

[zonk1001]

I'm 41yo, 6'4, 210 lbs, and a lifelong athlete who committed lots of insults to my spine and lived the natural consequences of these choices.  Hang glider crashes, rock climbing falls, assorted brutal jolts from football, wrestling, soccer, basketball, high speed skiing crashes, and so on.  

Oh, and multiple car crashes which, at least despite all the other incredible and occasionally alarmingly life-threatening experiences I have had, I am proud to say were not my fault.  Idiot, irresponsible drivers out there are probably what we have to fear most in life, unfortunately.  Talk about crazy things that happen in an instant over which we have no control.  But I digress.

So my body withstood 38 years of abusing myself before my luck ran out.  After an acute injury and while I was seeking relief for it, a horrible chiropractor wrenched my back in June 2008.  I felt and heard it, and so did he.  He damn well should have been more careful.  

Which leads me to:  We should all be careful of anyone who purports to 'heal' out there, they don't all heal.  Again, it’s common sense but deserves to be said because when we are hurting we are inherently relief seeking, too trusting, not skeptical enough to ask all the right questions of these folks to know whether we’re in good hands or not.

The bad chiro was the last straw in a long line of damage, bulging my discs at L3/L4, L4/L5, and L5/S1, pinching the main nerve running down my left leg.    

I tried to be a tough guy in the hopes that it would self-correct.  Massage therapy, more chiropractors, walking, swimming, PT, TENS, stretching, yoga, and lots of ice and ibuprofen for 6 months, standing work station, avoiding sitting and driving, until I couldn't stand the radiant left leg searing pain, couldn't concentrate on anything except how much agony I was feeling all the time, felt excruciating burning jolts of electricity when coughing or sneezing, and kept waking up screaming in the middle of the night because I had simply moved my body.  

Sleep deprivation, chronic pain, total hell just trying to live life.  These were new, awful things I was feeling 24/7.  I truly felt I had to do something or after a few years of this I was going to kill myself and end my own misery, regardless of what waits us beyond death.  I didn’t have control anymore, over anything.  

Recommended for an MRI at the end of the year by an orthopedic surgeon who read it and said 'Yes, you need surgery,'  I wanted both another opinion and someone who knew a lot about nerves, not just bones.  Saw Dr. Peter Reedy, an Idaho neurosurgeon who does not take patients until he's seen their MRI.  

That instilled confidence in me, because I knew he wasn't just dinking around.  Incredible man, talks fast and hates doctors.  Has long, braided hair like Willie Nelson and wears cowboy boots.  A straight talker.  He told me that he was likely to be able to remove a portion of the disc and resolve the pain because the herniated piece of disc was pinching the primary leg nerve and causing the intense sciatic leg pain.  

He told me that if I had back pain, I was much less likely to get relief than if I had leg pain.  

He told me that since it had been six months and I'd tried all the conservative stuff, it was unlikely it was going to resolve itself.  

I was tired of not being able to put my own socks on in the morning, being unable bend down or do my own laundry or dishes, and using all my sick and vacation time.  

I was willing to assume the always-present risks of paralysis and death that accompany spine surgery and anesthesia to, fully informed of the risks, roll the dice and take a chance to get my life back.  

So I elected to have the surgery.  I’m glad, to this day, I did.  I trusted him and he did great work.  

[zonk1001]

Thanks for sharing your experiences so fully.  I understand a little of it, I think.

I don't believe there is anything more excruciating than nerve pain and my heart goes out to all of us who have felt it and live(d) with chronic pain of that sort for any length of time.  

It is like being burned alive, sent to fiery hell just for moving the 'wrong' way, without rules for what is wrong or any conservative solutions that work.  

I would do anything to avoid that pain again, I lived with it for so long it became like family. I even managed, through meditation, to ignore it for a while, willing it to go away.  But it was structural, not muscular.  It would not just ‘go away’ on its own.

I was so desperate for relief I went to see a few quacks, wasted time and money on stuff that didn’t work, that I intuitively knew wouldn’t work, but did anyway just to rule out the possibility I might get some small shred of, even if temporary, pain relief.  

I have come to the conclusion that there are a few quacks out there, but by and large there are incredibly empathic people in the health & human service professions, many just didn’t have the tools to help me with what I needed when I needed it.  Fortunately I met healers, mentors, and empathic souls too who, even if they couldn’t physically resolve my issues with their tools and techniques, emotionally connected with and supported me as I struggled to heal.  In some ways embracing that network was one of the most critical parts of my journey.  

I'm pain free right now, today.  And grateful, blessed to feel normal again.  So thankful and appreciative.  

And fully cognizant that could change tomorrow.  

So I worked my *** off to get here and want to share a window into my process with you who are hurting NOW, today.  

All bets are off, for me, as to whether that nerve pain comes back someday.  It could return after the next roll of the dice in this existence of being human and living our fates.  

It’s so basic but important to remember things happen to us that are beyond our control, and we must struggle to overcome, survive, and thrive.  Even if it takes years of swimming through liquid pain to break through the surface and be able to draw deep breaths again.  

In all of the control we try to exert on our own lives, I believe we must have hope that there will be relief from the pain eventually, to convince ourselves to get up out of bed, no matter how bad it hurts, and get to walking, moving, and simply living.  To have faith in our own conviction to stay the course, have the integrity and honesty to carry ourselves there, and find the minds, mentors, support, and perhaps even higher powers to remind us what really matters when we have moments of weakness…for there will be great weaknesses along the way.  So I’m here to say HAVE HOPE!  

It was expensive to get here, where I am right now, (over $10K), even though I have good insurance that covered the other $50K I estimate my treatments and surgeries cost.  I still owe medical bills, paying them piecemeal, but still paying on all of them.  

I had to stop deluding myself and truly re-commit to taking care of myself again in a way that incorporated exercise, nutrition, standing up for myself to extricate myself from bad juju, even when I feel it coming at me from within my own family, and re-awakening to the common sense of recognizing basic reality.

We only have 100 years to live, after all, give or take.  We MUST make the most of that precious time.  

Unfortunately, I had to overdo my ‘recovery’ after the first surgery and have a second, exactly the same but more difficult surgery 2.5 years after having the first to learn from my mistakes.  

Which is why I’m writing all of this, ultimately.  I started wondering about all the other people out there who have had L5/S1 issues and after searching google and reading this blog decided I am really lucky to be where I’m at, it breaks my heart to read the pain in these messages, and I think people should hear my story too.  

I hope many, other, even more lucky people out there try all the conservative methods and get 100% relief without surgery.  

I hope a few less lucky people out there have only one surgery and give themselves optimal odds for the best recovery by taking it easy in contrast to what I did.  

For some, like me, it will take multiple surgeries.  I wish everyone the best and no pain on the other side.  

Here is how my first and second laminectomy/discectomy surgery came about:  (part II to follow)

[ALI51]

After five years of pain in the left hip, down the left leg and into the calf and foot and five years of PT, chiropractic treatments, decompression therapy, TENS unit, acupuncture, three orthopedic surgeons, etc., etc., I finally consulted with a neurosurgeon.  He did a microdiskectomy for herniated disc and spur.  I had been diagnosed with osteoarthritis 20 years ago when I was in my 40's. Surgery was on Oct. 20, 2011.  Went home following day.  I am pain free except for incision site sensitivity with some itching and a little swelling. I take Tylenol or Advil when I need to but not every 4 hours like I did for the last few years. I am thrilled.  I did not hesitate or have any second thoughts after the surgeon showed me the herniated disc and spur on the MRI.  My next step was either a psychiatrist or driving my car over a cliff.  I thank God for this new life He has given me!

[acushla]

Hi. I had laminectomy and discectomy on my L4/5 region a month ago.  Before that I stopped working for more than 2 months because I was in such pain from just walking. Both of my feet had stabbing pains and my thighs and calf muscles twitched all day - the most awful cramps. I tried a week of PT but it didn't do anything so I had an MRI done and true enough my nerve was being pushed by the herniated discs. I also have DDD on my spine.
Post op, the pain in my left foot is gone but my right foot still has numbness. My Ortho doctor told me that it would take time for that to go away. I can't sit for more than 30 minutes at a time (there'd be hell to pay) and can't walk for too long. I still take pregabalin everyday otherwise the pain in my thighs won't let me sleep.
As for surgery, I don't regret having it done. What I regret is waiting too long to have it checked. It started 2 years ago - spasms, tingling foot- and I just ignored it. Now it's irreversible (the DDD, that is) and I have to keep faith that things will still get better.

[Debb2011]

Hi,
What did you end up doing and how are you now?

I would really love to hear!!