Background Info

Hey all, I'm 22years old and just had a spinal fusion at L5-S1 on March 20th, 2012. I wanted to give a little bit of background information first. I have never done a blog before, but when I was searching online for peoples blogs/stories before surgery, I had such a hard time finding someone to relate to, let alone something other than horror stories. So I hope I can help some of you guys out by sharing my story...here it goes!


On December 17th, 2009, I was in a pretty bad car accident. I was stopped at a red light and was hit from behind by someone who "wasn't looking at the road" who was going about 35-40mph. From that day on, was hell. I was working 2 jobs at the time, about to start school, and eventually planned on becoming a pediatric nurse. My life has been and still is on hold, with nothing in my control. After x-rays and MRI's, I was diagnosed with a herniated disk at L5-S1, a bulging disk at L4-L5, and a bulging disk with at L3-L4. My injuries were not limited to my back though, but I am only going to talk about my back on here. The pain was horrible and I went through SO many different treatments for over 2years including but not limited to: chiropractic treatments, epidural injections, trigger point injections, heat/cold therapy, physical therapy, facet nerve block injections, osteopathic manipulation treatments, and many different medicines. None of which helped, or lasted. I lost hope and my worst fear of having a spine surgery was one of my only options left...I literally tried everything, and had no relief at all. The pain continued to worsen and was unbearable. I'm trying to keep this "background" short...the pain got to the point where I was desperate and finally met with a surgeon for an opinion. He recommended surgery, but was too willing to say yes to surgery, I didn't feel comfortable with him. So I did some research and saw a different surgeon. His name is Dr. Lowe and he said surgery may be my only option BUT he wanted to make sure by giving me a discogram (very painful but worth it to find out exactly where the pain is coming from/finding out what the problem is exactly). It was definitely my L5-S1 disk that was causing the pain. He recommended a spinal fusion, where I would have bolts and rods and my spine would eventually fuse together at that spot. He was confident that it would let me live a pain free life once again. As terrified as I was, I knew it needed to happen. 


Since all of this was going through motor vehicle insurance, it was hell to get the surgery approved. Constant fighting and back and fourth, it was exhausting and they weren't budging. Almost a year later, I took matters into my own hands and got insurance through the state (medicaid, for 65or older or disabled- which was me). They covered the hospitals part, but not my surgeons part because he was not in their network. I was not willing to change my surgeon, I think that its extremely important to have a good surgeon that you're comfortable with and that you trust. I was lucky to have my aunt pay for my surgeons part, if not, I probably would not have gotten this surgery at all. I found all of this out, that the surgery was actually going to happen FIVE days before the date we tried to schedule it for. I didn't think I would be able to get everything done that I needed to do. I had to do pre-admissions testings at the hospital, get fitted for my back brace, and a few other things. We pulled it off though, I went from thinking I was never going to be able to get this surgery, to finding out that it was going to be happening in 5 days. I didn't have time to mentally prepare, and  looking online, the only stories I could find were horror stories. I was terrified to say the least.


In my next post, I will give some info that I found on the type of surgery that I got.