Recovery Update

Recovery from my back surgery is going MUCH better this time compared to my last back surgery but I still have a ways to go before I am completely recovered. Currently, I am scheduled to go back to work on Nov 9th.

I had a Lateral Interbody Fusion of my L3/4 and L4/5. My previous surgery was a fusion of my L5/S1. So now, the bottom three discs in my back are removed and replaced with nuts, bolts and bone.

The Lateral Interbody procedure is new. It is a lot less invasive than normal back surgery but still requires three incisions: two on the side and one in the center of the back. Here are a couple of videos on the surgery.


This is a short video explaining the surgery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOpfUBrIA7c


This is a video of an ACTUAL surgery. The video is long but it is kind of cool watch. They have cameras inside of the body.

http://www.orlive.com/tgh/videos/xlif-procedure?cmpid=active_redirect

I had my surgery on September 21 and it is now October 14, so it has been about three and half weeks since surgery. The first week and half after surgery I was talking two Norco (super strength Vicodine) every four hours. At hour three I would be counting the minutes until I could take the next set of pills. It would then take about an hour for the pills to kick in. So was really only getting me about an hour of relief. A relief was really just making the pain manageable as opposed to making it go away.

The next week or so I was taking the same amount of pain pills but the pain was manageable for about 3 of the 4 hours between pills rather than just one. Now I am only taking one pill about 4 hours or so, except in the evening when I still take two. And while before I was lucky to get four straight hours of sleep, I now can sleep for about 6 – 7 hours before I am awaken by pain.

In the operation the cut me on my side and insert a small metal tube through some muscles all the way to the back bone. They then spread the muscles a part so they can get at the discs. This muscle runs down the side of your back bone and down your leg. Because of this, I had a very difficult time moving my right leg after surgery. It was extremely painful to straighten it out so I had to keep some pillows under the knee to keep it bent. This also made it difficult to walk and it is hard to walk without straightening out your leg. Right now, I think the leg pain is worse than the back pain which my doctor says is a good sign. He said that the larger the muscle, the more painful it is. But the fact that my leg is bothering more than my back shows that my back has improved.

Before surgery, I used to get a lot of nerve pain down my left leg. This pain is completely gone now – very good sign.

So right now, my doctor wants me to try to get up and walk around a lot. My back is growing bone where the disc used to be and I need to make sure my back is straight or the bone will grow in wrong. Tania is taking me on “field trips” everyday so I can get some good walking time in. Although after 30 minutes or so my leg gets very sore and start limping. I went to the grocery store with Tania on Monday, yesterday we went to the mall and today I get to go to Target. Boy, my life is just full of adventure.