Anxiety/Depression after spinal fusion surgery

Good luck with your surgery!
I got my life back from mine after long delays because of Work Comp.
It took them 18 months to approve my surgery and I lost my job of 32 years if you can believe that one!
One thing I learned along the way by the many doctors I saw is to ask 2 questions to doctor doing the surgery
How many of these surgeries have you performed
How many patients did you have to take back into the operating room very important.
My surgeon had done 2500 and only took back 2 patients into surgery!
My surgery was 9 hours.
I am great I just still have this anxiousness after 5 years, an every morning buzz up my spine and back .
It’s very unsettling.

Thinking about you in surgery today. I hope you have a terrific surgical outcome. Your sadness and likely depression are, I believe, normal and predictable. I also understand your frustration that, instead of acknowledging your feelings ("I can understand why you feel sad...") well-meaning friends follow the cheerleading path of "Think of the upsides..." It's just human nature at work and there's nothing you can do to change that. As said - folks mean well. Just know that those of us who've experienced
what you're now experiencing - we understand exactly why you feel the way you do and appreciate your quiet desperation. You have a great way of expressing yourself in writing based on your post and I'd encourage you to journal your experiences and feelings every day. I'm glad I did that. Wishing you the best...

I am considering back surgery at Mayo where I had bilateral knee replacements when I use to live in Scottsdale. I will be coming in from out of town for the surgery. Do any of you have advice as far as making out of town arrangements? About how long should I expect to be there, etc. Where did you stay?

Thank you for responding if you have any answers or suggestions.

Morning. First off - wishing you the best on your back surgery! Know you're at the right place with the best docs. My back surgeries have been at Mayo JAX. For the second round, we decided to rent a VRBO house, for four weeks, near Mayo so we would be close to the mother ship in the event of any pop-up post-surgical issues. (For our first surgery, we bolted for home - seven hour's drive - immediately. It was too soon.) In the end, we're glad we stayed close as there were a few - minor - issues where it was good to have easy access to Mayo.

Yes, I've experienced debilitating depression and anxiety after fusion of L3 thru S1. Now eleven weeks post surgery, dealing with pain, fears, loneliness (being single), meds and their side effects, and a lot of mixed advice from well intentioned friend & family was overwhelming. Recently, my GP doctor started me on a low dose of Cymbalta, 30 mg., a mixture of ant-depressant and a nerve relaxer which has been a tremendous help at this point. I plan to quit it asap but for now, I'm in less pain, enjoying a much better mood, find myself more equipped to make my physical therapy goals, and getting out more which helps all around.
Anti-depressants are tricky. Please find a professional to work with. Back surgery is a long healing process and it's hard to be as patient as is required but now I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel and I no longer think it's a train. My best of everything to you.

Agreed - spine surgery is so overwhelming - and do not forget it is connected to the brain so it is so sensitive - it feels like this is totally overlooked in terms of how difficult healing and ADJUSTING is - having spine fusion is very traumatic and nobody should just frame it as having a bright side and easy to just deal with it. I view this experience as depressing because it seems to change your entire life and if you were a person who enjoyed and had good physical activity ability it is not easy to reconcile the restrictions and pain experienced postop without any idea of whether it will ever get better. Ideally my goal would be to come back from this BETTER than I was before, but I think I am just dreaming in technicolor. Yet I do not accept restriction, pain and limitation with physical activity nor accept anyone else's placement of limitiations on me. In Restless Creature, a documentary about ballet star Wendy Whelan, she states the problem really well - she wants to continue to dance notwithstanding a hip injury and will strive to do that no matter what.

@solom174 I was curious and I found the documentary on Wendy Whelan and watched it. Thank you for sharing that! I always have loved and appreciated ballet and saw many of the great dancers live 50 years ago including the director of New York City Ballet in this film as a featured dancer. I even have my programs with photos from back then! That was really beautiful. Perhaps that sounds odd to hear, but aside from ballet being really beautiful, her determination and inner strength was beautiful to watch. It's about loosing something you really love, and trying to find it again. I know that too in my own story because I was loosing what I loved the most which was to paint because I am an artist, and I was unable to control my arms. It got to where pushing a shopping cart or driving a car exhausted me, and I would have to nap for an hour, and the last painting I did before spine surgery required me to support my arms because I could not hold them up. I had my own mountain to climb during my recovery, and like Wendy I did that and reawakened my talent. I know this is different for everyone and a different path that we as spine patients walk. I know for you, your story is still unfolding. When you enter into spine surgery, it is hard to know what the outcome will be and how that will feel. You grieve what is lost and you look for the strength to overpower the emotional loss and to find yourself again among the changes. It may take a long time, but that is a journey worth taking.

I had a C5 - C7 spinal fusion not for pain but after doing an MRI my neurologist saw the C5 - C6 discs were so close I might become quadriplegic if I fell given that I was epileptic I had surgery within the week. When they did it they found out the C6 & C7 were too close too. Anxiety and depression which I had some of increased mostly because I thought about them having put this metal in my spine. Yes, I know they do it all the time and to them, it is no big deal. Well to me it was. Well I had the surgery 20 years ago and the fusion is still stable, CT, MRI, etc. can be done without any problems and maybe you are not consciously thinking about these things but since I have had this surgery and after 20 years I still think about it February 2003 - who would remember the month and year of surgery unless in some way it was traumatic. So that may be why you are having anxiety. It is OK, anxiety is part of each one's particular life and it is how we figure out how to cope with our worries. I keep on mentioning when I make comments to look on Mayo for questions about anything medical, if my idea is that this might be worrying about the long-term effects of spinal fusions maybe you could search that. At the top of this page is the search feature, in fact since I keep on wondering about that and I have said that to you after I post this that is exactly what I am going to do. Take care I hope this gives some help

I've thought about this discussion a lot. After some online researching, I've come to the belief that one potential side effect of a major surgery - and most spinal surges would qualify as "major" - is a form of PTSD. I looked up PTSD symptoms and I exhibited many/most of them after my surgeries...Might be fairly common?

I wish the medical professionals would help patients understand there may be some PTSD and offer suggestions on management. PTSD is a real thing and specialized treatments can be a great help.

Even 20 years later - understanding if you have unresolved PTSD can lead to useful treatments.

Agreed, I think I have this, and the impact of such major surgery was completely minimized by my surgeon who said before the surgery I would only need 4 weeks to recover!! It is now more than 9 months on and this was surgery of a magnitude I did not fully comprehend as it was completely misrepresented. No kidding I have PTSD and others would too, the surgeon never had this surgery so he looks at it like a piece of cake for him without considering what the patient will have to go through after. It is ridiculous that spine surgery is practiced this way.