My appointment went well. My fear of the doctor not being nice or not being able to help disappeared the moment he stepped in the room. The first words out of his mouth were," You are way too young for all this"... but went on to tell me that surgery is my only option b/c I can’t live with it and nothing else worked. He examined me, said my right arm is weaker than my left. Asked a lot of questions. We looked over my MRI. He talked to Bryan specifically, showing him what was going on and said "If this was my wife, this is what I would do...".
He showed us the artificial disc that he hopes to use. It's a little metal device. He goes in through the front of my neck, takes out the ruptured disc, and then hooks one metal piece to the top bone and one to the bottom bone, and then it has a little ball that when it comes together you still have movement. As long as I don’t have any bone spurs, this should work perfectly for me. If I do have bone spurs, I will need a bone graft, fusion, and cage around my spine. The recovery for that is 4 weeks longer than the disc replacement.
I have to get another MRI done and a CT Scan done to determine what kind of surgery I will have. They are getting insurance approval and will call me when the appointments are made. We are hoping for surgery the week of the 7th of August.
As we were getting ready to leave, the Dr came out of another exam room and asked us to come meet someone. Inside was a man who was my age who had this surgery done 6 months ago. He had all my symptoms, is my age, but is a fireman... and he went back to work 3.5 wks after surgery. His job is a lot more physical than mine and he went back in that short amount of time. I was glad I got to meet him and hear firsthand how he is doing. It was reassuring. I feel good knowing I am in good hands. I really liked the Dr. He took the time to explain everything to us which is a big thing for me. From what I've read, this has a good success rate.
Pray for no bone spurs so I can do the artificial disc and be on my road to recovery!
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