I appreciate hearing from all of you and the strategies that have helped or not. The pain from spinal stenosis started May 2021 and is partially alleviated by chiropractic designed exercises and treatment. The programme is Lumbar Spinal Stenosis Boot Camp by Dr. Carlo Ammendolia from Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Ontario Canada. It's a 6 week, 2times per week programme with exercises to be done at home. The exercises take an hour and I have been doing them 6 days a week. I made progress but now I keep having pain and movement/balance issues.
I have had an MRI . It indicates a large disc protrusion with left sided spinal stenosis at L3-L4. There is also a bulging of disc at L2-3.
I have not seen an orthopedic surgeon-I guess that would be next. I have tried mindfulness and I'm not able to do it or acupuncture.
I swim regularly without pain.
I’ve had excellent results following the Gokhale Primal Posture method. Crowdsourced evaluations are exceptional and after training and practicing the method for a few months my spinal stenosis (severe L4-L5) pain has been virtually eliminated without surgery.
I’ve had excellent results following the Gokhale Primal Posture method. Crowdsourced evaluations are exceptional and after training and practicing the method for a few months my spinal stenosis (severe L4-L5) pain has been virtually eliminated without surgery.
Hello @mayoandme and welcome to Mayo Clinic Connect. I can see you have already been joined by several members sharing their experiences such as @siltal2018@pat75@barbfowler and @lioness2001 since your originally posted.
How wonderful that you have found swimming to be one way to effectively minimize your pain, and thank you for sharing that for other members to consider.
Will you be seeking an appointment with an Orthopedic Surgeon as you mentioned?
Hello @mayoandme and welcome to Mayo Clinic Connect. I can see you have already been joined by several members sharing their experiences such as @siltal2018@pat75@barbfowler and @lioness2001 since your originally posted.
How wonderful that you have found swimming to be one way to effectively minimize your pain, and thank you for sharing that for other members to consider.
Will you be seeking an appointment with an Orthopedic Surgeon as you mentioned?
Good morning, yes if I follow the DOC program, I'll let you know what I think. Right now I'm a third of the way through Hanscom's book. My takeaway so far is there are docs that cut and docs that are conservative. What's on the MRI doesn't always dictate surgery. Unfortunately, some docs that cut are correct in doing so and give their patients a good life. It's just so hard to tell what kind of outcome a person's going to have. Is acupuncture working for you? What is MBSR? I'm in water PT three times a week. So far so good. As I said, I'm doing the conservative approach first and then see where that leads me. I have opinions from two orthopedic surgeons and one neurosurgeon. I'm not big into drug therapy, but when I hurt I've been using Meloxicam (which is stronger than Ibuprofin), Flexeril, Alieve, and Tylneol. (not all at once of course). I'm not sure a fusion is the answer. I keep reading about the failure rates of it and the impact on other joints. At some point I'll have to "pick a doctor" as my husband says. Oh and Gabapentin hasn't really been good for me due to side effects. On another note, tell me. What specifically is wrong with your spine? Do you have stenosis, spondylosis, etc? Best, Jeanne
Hello Jeanne, good to hear back from you. So far I've not noticed any reinvigoration of nerves from the acupuncture, but then I've only had 3 sessions. I'm thinking I'll reevaluate after the 6th session. I think I mentioned MBSR in an earlier post, but maybe that was in another group.....anyway, it stands for Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. Developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the Univ. of Massachusetts Medical Center some years back and now used by many other institutions. I took the 8-week zoom class through our university medical center (last class was this afternoon). Yes, it's what is sounds like: meditation. I'm drawn to it because I like the mental discipline that it requires and the physical and mental calmness it fosters. But it's been a slog, because my anxiety level was sky-high at the start of the class, and it's not much decreased now.
I know the reason I'm still anxious is because I don't have all the information I would like about how all this slowly increasing numbness ends. But I'm calm enough now to do what I know has to be done: get my head out of the sand and schedule another consultation with my doctor, insist on his answering all my questions; referral to specialists if needed (neurologist? pain-management? orthopedic surgeon?) Then, as your husband says, "pick a doctor" if it comes to that.
Drugs for me are a very occasional use of 400mg ibuprofen and 500g acetaminophen. That's all. From trial and error I found that Tylenol by itself doesn't do me much good, that I really need the anti-inflammatory component of Advil.....reducing the inflammation of my L5 nerve gives the nerve just a bit more space, so the compression is reduced. When I combine the two drugs, I almost feel like my old self again (although at age 75 it's kinda hard to remember who she was....). What bothers me, though, is I KNOW that the pain-relief ingredients of both these drugs aren't doing anything to solve the physical problem. Sure, they alter the neural pathways, and I feel calmer....and that's a good thing.....but the spine is still arthritic, still has some herniated discs, and still has the bony growths that are causing stenosis in the lumbar area (specifically, L5 nerve on the right side). Tylenol, medical marijuana, CBD, opioids, and whatever other pain relievers are out there, just DON'T CURE the problem. And so far neither has acupuncture. Nor does meditation.....but it does help one cope with the condition and its attendant pain. I figure with meditation I don't have to ingest anything, don't have to schedule appointments with various practitioners, don't have to pay $$$ for treatments...it's just me, on my own time, practicing calming myself.
Since spinal stenosis apparently can't be cured, only managed, it's not unrealistic to expect that the arthritic spine will continue to "age" and, thus, different symptoms will appear over the years. For that I do rely on PT. Usually 8-12 wks does it for me. (I wish I had access to aquatic therapy.)
The few people I've known who tried Gabapentin all reported having to stop it owing to feeling drugged all the time. I dunno, maybe varying the dosage would have helped them. But as for me, when I read that among the side effects are depression and suicidal thoughts, I knew that it was not a drug for a melancholy pessimist like me, given to catastrophic thinking!
Somewhere I've got some research articles bookmarked about decompression being sufficient, without fusion. If I can find them again, I'll post the links.
Hello again Jeanne. Here's a link I mentioned last night, about decompression without fusion: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27074066/
The article is just one in a large cluster of articles about PT versus surgery; fusion; decompression. In many cases the list is only the titles of the articles; not even abstracts are given, but a persistent person can probably find a desired paper. Not sure if any of this pertains to your situation, but maybe you can find something useful.
I have an appointment with my PCP tomorrow, to assess the current numbness in my right foot and lower leg and find out where we go from there. It's weird.....PT is relieving the nerve tingling that started on the LEFT leg about 2 months ago, BUT (drat!) the RIGHT leg is getting worse day by day.
Hello again Jeanne. Here's a link I mentioned last night, about decompression without fusion: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27074066/
The article is just one in a large cluster of articles about PT versus surgery; fusion; decompression. In many cases the list is only the titles of the articles; not even abstracts are given, but a persistent person can probably find a desired paper. Not sure if any of this pertains to your situation, but maybe you can find something useful.
I have an appointment with my PCP tomorrow, to assess the current numbness in my right foot and lower leg and find out where we go from there. It's weird.....PT is relieving the nerve tingling that started on the LEFT leg about 2 months ago, BUT (drat!) the RIGHT leg is getting worse day by day.
Hello again Jeanne. Here's a link I mentioned last night, about decompression without fusion: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27074066/
The article is just one in a large cluster of articles about PT versus surgery; fusion; decompression. In many cases the list is only the titles of the articles; not even abstracts are given, but a persistent person can probably find a desired paper. Not sure if any of this pertains to your situation, but maybe you can find something useful.
I have an appointment with my PCP tomorrow, to assess the current numbness in my right foot and lower leg and find out where we go from there. It's weird.....PT is relieving the nerve tingling that started on the LEFT leg about 2 months ago, BUT (drat!) the RIGHT leg is getting worse day by day.
With any clinical trial, it is important to look at the exclusion criteria because if a patient has those criteria, the results of the study may not apply to them. As patients, we are often biased and look for the easy way out, an answer that avoids going through surgery. Sometimes that approach is correct, as surgery should be the last resort, but we do have to ask if the results of the study we found actually apply to our situation. I kept looking for details in the study on the methods of how decompression surgery was done alone without a fusion, and I didn't find it. If a fusion is done, it is because a disc is removed and the vertebrae are fused together with a bone graft or cage seeded with bone to fill the space.
The exclusion criteria are shown in table #1 and include scoliosis (Cobb angle measurement that measures side bend of spine), spondylolisthesis (slipping of one vertebra past another), instability or a herniated disc. A herniated disc is a common cause of spinal stenosis in the central canal. I am a spine surgery patient, and that happened to me in my neck. The jelly like nucleus gets squished out of the ruptured disc and causes inflammation which it turn generates bone growth that tries to stabilize the spine. This caused bone spurs to grow next to my herniation, and 9 months later, those bone spurs had doubled and filled in on the other side of the disc protrusion. All of that was pressing into my spinal cord, and the only way to decompress that was surgery, and the surgeon had to access the central canal by removing the bad disc. The disc height had collapsed by 50% and I lost a quarter inch of my standing height. All of this spine degeneration had progressed while I was in physical therapy for thoracic outlet syndrome which is a compression syndrome of nerve bundles and blood vessels passing through the chest and shoulder. My therapy did also involve trying to relieve neck tightness and spasms and to try to maintain a normal spine curvature. Physical therapy did help buy some time before surgery, and for 2 years, I wasn't able to find a surgeon willing to help me. I probably would have been much worse off without PT. After 5 surgeons turned me down, I came to Mayo, and had decompression surgery with a spinal fusion at C5/C6. That was 5 years ago, and I do not have any adjacent segment disease.
I also have the book that was mentioned by David Hanscom M.D. called "Back in Control". It is excellent, and he is a spine surgeon who makes the case that too many unnecessary back surgeries are done. One thing to realize is that fear increases pain a lot, and as patients worry about needing surgery they likely increase their pain because of their fear. He gives some ways to try to reduce anxiety by writing down your fear, and throwing that note away. He also mentions myofascial release physical therapy, and I had been doing that with my physical therapist for many years. MFR gets the body moving by releasing overly tight tissues with a gentle stretch, and can relieve pain by removing restrictions. MFR helped add to the success of my fusion and the recovery.
Dr. Hanscom talks about calming your fears and rewiring your brain, and that is exactly what I did in those 2 years leading up to my spine surgery as I worked through and addressed my overwhelming fear. By the time I got to my surgery, I had conquered the fear and went calmly into my future.
It's important to realize that you can overcome your fears if you want to make the effort. Doing that will free you from it for the rest of your life. It certainly helps to learn all you can about your condition and understand how treatment or surgery can help, as well as understand how to minimize the surgical risks. You need to understand what your future will likely be if you do nothing, do therapy instead, and how you can change your destiny in the choices that you make. Remember that you are lucky to have choices, and those choices can possibly help avoid a disability in the future. When you realize that you are making the choices, it takes some of the stress out of those feelings of being trapped by a diagnosis and a recommended surgery. When it becomes clear that surgery will give you a valuable benefit, don't say to yourself that you have no choice except surgery. It may be the only good choice, and it is still a choice with a willing provider. It was my only good choice because I was loosing the coordination of my arms and was at risk of paralysis if there was an accident or a fall. I am grateful for the surgery that gave me back the use of my arms. This is my story. https://sharing.mayoclinic.org/2019/01/09/using-the-art-of-medicine-to-overcome-fear-of-surgery/
With any clinical trial, it is important to look at the exclusion criteria because if a patient has those criteria, the results of the study may not apply to them. As patients, we are often biased and look for the easy way out, an answer that avoids going through surgery. Sometimes that approach is correct, as surgery should be the last resort, but we do have to ask if the results of the study we found actually apply to our situation. I kept looking for details in the study on the methods of how decompression surgery was done alone without a fusion, and I didn't find it. If a fusion is done, it is because a disc is removed and the vertebrae are fused together with a bone graft or cage seeded with bone to fill the space.
The exclusion criteria are shown in table #1 and include scoliosis (Cobb angle measurement that measures side bend of spine), spondylolisthesis (slipping of one vertebra past another), instability or a herniated disc. A herniated disc is a common cause of spinal stenosis in the central canal. I am a spine surgery patient, and that happened to me in my neck. The jelly like nucleus gets squished out of the ruptured disc and causes inflammation which it turn generates bone growth that tries to stabilize the spine. This caused bone spurs to grow next to my herniation, and 9 months later, those bone spurs had doubled and filled in on the other side of the disc protrusion. All of that was pressing into my spinal cord, and the only way to decompress that was surgery, and the surgeon had to access the central canal by removing the bad disc. The disc height had collapsed by 50% and I lost a quarter inch of my standing height. All of this spine degeneration had progressed while I was in physical therapy for thoracic outlet syndrome which is a compression syndrome of nerve bundles and blood vessels passing through the chest and shoulder. My therapy did also involve trying to relieve neck tightness and spasms and to try to maintain a normal spine curvature. Physical therapy did help buy some time before surgery, and for 2 years, I wasn't able to find a surgeon willing to help me. I probably would have been much worse off without PT. After 5 surgeons turned me down, I came to Mayo, and had decompression surgery with a spinal fusion at C5/C6. That was 5 years ago, and I do not have any adjacent segment disease.
I also have the book that was mentioned by David Hanscom M.D. called "Back in Control". It is excellent, and he is a spine surgeon who makes the case that too many unnecessary back surgeries are done. One thing to realize is that fear increases pain a lot, and as patients worry about needing surgery they likely increase their pain because of their fear. He gives some ways to try to reduce anxiety by writing down your fear, and throwing that note away. He also mentions myofascial release physical therapy, and I had been doing that with my physical therapist for many years. MFR gets the body moving by releasing overly tight tissues with a gentle stretch, and can relieve pain by removing restrictions. MFR helped add to the success of my fusion and the recovery.
Dr. Hanscom talks about calming your fears and rewiring your brain, and that is exactly what I did in those 2 years leading up to my spine surgery as I worked through and addressed my overwhelming fear. By the time I got to my surgery, I had conquered the fear and went calmly into my future.
It's important to realize that you can overcome your fears if you want to make the effort. Doing that will free you from it for the rest of your life. It certainly helps to learn all you can about your condition and understand how treatment or surgery can help, as well as understand how to minimize the surgical risks. You need to understand what your future will likely be if you do nothing, do therapy instead, and how you can change your destiny in the choices that you make. Remember that you are lucky to have choices, and those choices can possibly help avoid a disability in the future. When you realize that you are making the choices, it takes some of the stress out of those feelings of being trapped by a diagnosis and a recommended surgery. When it becomes clear that surgery will give you a valuable benefit, don't say to yourself that you have no choice except surgery. It may be the only good choice, and it is still a choice with a willing provider. It was my only good choice because I was loosing the coordination of my arms and was at risk of paralysis if there was an accident or a fall. I am grateful for the surgery that gave me back the use of my arms. This is my story. https://sharing.mayoclinic.org/2019/01/09/using-the-art-of-medicine-to-overcome-fear-of-surgery/
Jennifer, thank you very much for taking the time to read the full article and to "interpret" it for the rest of us. I hadn't searched for that full article because I'm not currently considering surgery at all; I bookmarked it as something I might want to read at a later time, and thought Jeanne might find it useful for her situation.
Interesting about the exclusion criteria. I have one of them: lumbar scoliosis. I don't know if ALL scoliosis patients were excluded, or only those with a certain degree of curve, but no matter because, as I said, I'm not currently considering surgery.
I'm particularly moved by your discussion of fear and of making choices.....and the fact that you took 2 years to overcome your fear and to recognize that you were being given a choice between disability or getting a valuable benefit. My doctor today assured me that I'm not "3 hours away from paralysis" (when I say I'm given to catastrophic thinking, I'm not kidding!), but he did give me a balanced, if sobering, assessment of my likely future. That assessment combined with your thoughtful remarks encourages me to continue with PT for the present but also continue to educate myself on possible surgical choices for the future WHILE developing a meditation practice. I've just completed the 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, so am still quite the amateur meditator. I hope I'll get better at it, so if the time does come for me to have surgery I'll be much better prepared mentally/emotionally for it. What a vision: to go calmly into the future. Thanks so much for your wise words. Pat
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I appreciate hearing from all of you and the strategies that have helped or not. The pain from spinal stenosis started May 2021 and is partially alleviated by chiropractic designed exercises and treatment. The programme is Lumbar Spinal Stenosis Boot Camp by Dr. Carlo Ammendolia from Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Ontario Canada. It's a 6 week, 2times per week programme with exercises to be done at home. The exercises take an hour and I have been doing them 6 days a week. I made progress but now I keep having pain and movement/balance issues.
I have had an MRI . It indicates a large disc protrusion with left sided spinal stenosis at L3-L4. There is also a bulging of disc at L2-3.
I have not seen an orthopedic surgeon-I guess that would be next. I have tried mindfulness and I'm not able to do it or acupuncture.
I swim regularly without pain.
I’ve had excellent results following the Gokhale Primal Posture method. Crowdsourced evaluations are exceptional and after training and practicing the method for a few months my spinal stenosis (severe L4-L5) pain has been virtually eliminated without surgery.
Thank you! I will give it a try. I’m L4 and L5 as well and severe degeneration.
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1 ReactionHello @mayoandme and welcome to Mayo Clinic Connect. I can see you have already been joined by several members sharing their experiences such as @siltal2018 @pat75 @barbfowler and @lioness2001 since your originally posted.
How wonderful that you have found swimming to be one way to effectively minimize your pain, and thank you for sharing that for other members to consider.
Will you be seeking an appointment with an Orthopedic Surgeon as you mentioned?
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1 ReactionI’m not swimming. It’s aqua therapy and so far I’m not sure it’s helping.
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1 ReactionHello Jeanne, good to hear back from you. So far I've not noticed any reinvigoration of nerves from the acupuncture, but then I've only had 3 sessions. I'm thinking I'll reevaluate after the 6th session. I think I mentioned MBSR in an earlier post, but maybe that was in another group.....anyway, it stands for Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. Developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the Univ. of Massachusetts Medical Center some years back and now used by many other institutions. I took the 8-week zoom class through our university medical center (last class was this afternoon). Yes, it's what is sounds like: meditation. I'm drawn to it because I like the mental discipline that it requires and the physical and mental calmness it fosters. But it's been a slog, because my anxiety level was sky-high at the start of the class, and it's not much decreased now.
I know the reason I'm still anxious is because I don't have all the information I would like about how all this slowly increasing numbness ends. But I'm calm enough now to do what I know has to be done: get my head out of the sand and schedule another consultation with my doctor, insist on his answering all my questions; referral to specialists if needed (neurologist? pain-management? orthopedic surgeon?) Then, as your husband says, "pick a doctor" if it comes to that.
Drugs for me are a very occasional use of 400mg ibuprofen and 500g acetaminophen. That's all. From trial and error I found that Tylenol by itself doesn't do me much good, that I really need the anti-inflammatory component of Advil.....reducing the inflammation of my L5 nerve gives the nerve just a bit more space, so the compression is reduced. When I combine the two drugs, I almost feel like my old self again (although at age 75 it's kinda hard to remember who she was....). What bothers me, though, is I KNOW that the pain-relief ingredients of both these drugs aren't doing anything to solve the physical problem. Sure, they alter the neural pathways, and I feel calmer....and that's a good thing.....but the spine is still arthritic, still has some herniated discs, and still has the bony growths that are causing stenosis in the lumbar area (specifically, L5 nerve on the right side). Tylenol, medical marijuana, CBD, opioids, and whatever other pain relievers are out there, just DON'T CURE the problem. And so far neither has acupuncture. Nor does meditation.....but it does help one cope with the condition and its attendant pain. I figure with meditation I don't have to ingest anything, don't have to schedule appointments with various practitioners, don't have to pay $$$ for treatments...it's just me, on my own time, practicing calming myself.
Since spinal stenosis apparently can't be cured, only managed, it's not unrealistic to expect that the arthritic spine will continue to "age" and, thus, different symptoms will appear over the years. For that I do rely on PT. Usually 8-12 wks does it for me. (I wish I had access to aquatic therapy.)
The few people I've known who tried Gabapentin all reported having to stop it owing to feeling drugged all the time. I dunno, maybe varying the dosage would have helped them. But as for me, when I read that among the side effects are depression and suicidal thoughts, I knew that it was not a drug for a melancholy pessimist like me, given to catastrophic thinking!
Somewhere I've got some research articles bookmarked about decompression being sufficient, without fusion. If I can find them again, I'll post the links.
Best,
Pat
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1 ReactionHello again Jeanne. Here's a link I mentioned last night, about decompression without fusion:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27074066/
The article is just one in a large cluster of articles about PT versus surgery; fusion; decompression. In many cases the list is only the titles of the articles; not even abstracts are given, but a persistent person can probably find a desired paper. Not sure if any of this pertains to your situation, but maybe you can find something useful.
I have an appointment with my PCP tomorrow, to assess the current numbness in my right foot and lower leg and find out where we go from there. It's weird.....PT is relieving the nerve tingling that started on the LEFT leg about 2 months ago, BUT (drat!) the RIGHT leg is getting worse day by day.
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2 ReactionsThanks!
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1 Reaction@lioness2001 @pat75 I was interested in the article you posted, and by searching for the title, I found the full article at this link. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1513721
With any clinical trial, it is important to look at the exclusion criteria because if a patient has those criteria, the results of the study may not apply to them. As patients, we are often biased and look for the easy way out, an answer that avoids going through surgery. Sometimes that approach is correct, as surgery should be the last resort, but we do have to ask if the results of the study we found actually apply to our situation. I kept looking for details in the study on the methods of how decompression surgery was done alone without a fusion, and I didn't find it. If a fusion is done, it is because a disc is removed and the vertebrae are fused together with a bone graft or cage seeded with bone to fill the space.
The exclusion criteria are shown in table #1 and include scoliosis (Cobb angle measurement that measures side bend of spine), spondylolisthesis (slipping of one vertebra past another), instability or a herniated disc. A herniated disc is a common cause of spinal stenosis in the central canal. I am a spine surgery patient, and that happened to me in my neck. The jelly like nucleus gets squished out of the ruptured disc and causes inflammation which it turn generates bone growth that tries to stabilize the spine. This caused bone spurs to grow next to my herniation, and 9 months later, those bone spurs had doubled and filled in on the other side of the disc protrusion. All of that was pressing into my spinal cord, and the only way to decompress that was surgery, and the surgeon had to access the central canal by removing the bad disc. The disc height had collapsed by 50% and I lost a quarter inch of my standing height. All of this spine degeneration had progressed while I was in physical therapy for thoracic outlet syndrome which is a compression syndrome of nerve bundles and blood vessels passing through the chest and shoulder. My therapy did also involve trying to relieve neck tightness and spasms and to try to maintain a normal spine curvature. Physical therapy did help buy some time before surgery, and for 2 years, I wasn't able to find a surgeon willing to help me. I probably would have been much worse off without PT. After 5 surgeons turned me down, I came to Mayo, and had decompression surgery with a spinal fusion at C5/C6. That was 5 years ago, and I do not have any adjacent segment disease.
I also have the book that was mentioned by David Hanscom M.D. called "Back in Control". It is excellent, and he is a spine surgeon who makes the case that too many unnecessary back surgeries are done. One thing to realize is that fear increases pain a lot, and as patients worry about needing surgery they likely increase their pain because of their fear. He gives some ways to try to reduce anxiety by writing down your fear, and throwing that note away. He also mentions myofascial release physical therapy, and I had been doing that with my physical therapist for many years. MFR gets the body moving by releasing overly tight tissues with a gentle stretch, and can relieve pain by removing restrictions. MFR helped add to the success of my fusion and the recovery.
Here is our discussion of Myofascial Release therapy. https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/myofascial-release-therapy-mfr-for-treating-compression-and-pain/
You can find information from Dr. Hanscom here. https://backincontrol.com/
Dr. Hanscom talks about calming your fears and rewiring your brain, and that is exactly what I did in those 2 years leading up to my spine surgery as I worked through and addressed my overwhelming fear. By the time I got to my surgery, I had conquered the fear and went calmly into my future.
It's important to realize that you can overcome your fears if you want to make the effort. Doing that will free you from it for the rest of your life. It certainly helps to learn all you can about your condition and understand how treatment or surgery can help, as well as understand how to minimize the surgical risks. You need to understand what your future will likely be if you do nothing, do therapy instead, and how you can change your destiny in the choices that you make. Remember that you are lucky to have choices, and those choices can possibly help avoid a disability in the future. When you realize that you are making the choices, it takes some of the stress out of those feelings of being trapped by a diagnosis and a recommended surgery. When it becomes clear that surgery will give you a valuable benefit, don't say to yourself that you have no choice except surgery. It may be the only good choice, and it is still a choice with a willing provider. It was my only good choice because I was loosing the coordination of my arms and was at risk of paralysis if there was an accident or a fall. I am grateful for the surgery that gave me back the use of my arms. This is my story.
https://sharing.mayoclinic.org/2019/01/09/using-the-art-of-medicine-to-overcome-fear-of-surgery/
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5 ReactionsJennifer, thank you very much for taking the time to read the full article and to "interpret" it for the rest of us. I hadn't searched for that full article because I'm not currently considering surgery at all; I bookmarked it as something I might want to read at a later time, and thought Jeanne might find it useful for her situation.
Interesting about the exclusion criteria. I have one of them: lumbar scoliosis. I don't know if ALL scoliosis patients were excluded, or only those with a certain degree of curve, but no matter because, as I said, I'm not currently considering surgery.
I'm particularly moved by your discussion of fear and of making choices.....and the fact that you took 2 years to overcome your fear and to recognize that you were being given a choice between disability or getting a valuable benefit. My doctor today assured me that I'm not "3 hours away from paralysis" (when I say I'm given to catastrophic thinking, I'm not kidding!), but he did give me a balanced, if sobering, assessment of my likely future. That assessment combined with your thoughtful remarks encourages me to continue with PT for the present but also continue to educate myself on possible surgical choices for the future WHILE developing a meditation practice. I've just completed the 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, so am still quite the amateur meditator. I hope I'll get better at it, so if the time does come for me to have surgery I'll be much better prepared mentally/emotionally for it. What a vision: to go calmly into the future. Thanks so much for your wise words. Pat
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2 Reactions