@tadueo I can appreciate your concern for the episodes when you are suddenly falling, and in reading some of your other posts, I see that you are 90 years old and have significant spinal degeneration and bone spurring. My question to you is what are you doing to prevent falling?

My dad had a skull fracture and traumatic brain injury that changed his life. He fell and hit his head on concrete when he was outside cutting down some invasive tree growing against the foundation of his house. He was never the same after that although he did live many more years. At 90, you may not do well with spine surgery. It is a major trauma to the body as well as the general anesthesia being hard on the body. Sometimes older patients do not come out of anesthesia so easily. My mom was one and needed oxygen after a parathyroid surgery. With surgery you always have to balance the risk against the benefit. There may not be enough enough benefit to make surgery a good option for you. Surgery can make you worse and cause permanent pain.

I am a spine surgery patient and had a cervical fusion because of spinal cord compression. I also had some issues with muscle spasms that rotated my C1 & C2 that before my spine surgery caused sudden vertigo and loss of balance. That happens because of the vertebral arteries that run along the sides of the cervical vertebrae, and if the vertebrae are twisted, the arteries get stretched. All I had to do was look up at a bird flying over and lost my balance and fell. You could have similar issues if your vertebrae have some slipping out of normal positions and your head movement triggers this.

Have you talked to your doctor about using a wheel chair to prevent falling? It happens so suddenly for you and you say that you cannot prevent it from happening when you bend over. The risk of injury is huge for a person your age if you fall. If you hit your head, it could be fatal. With my dad, he was in the hospital for about 3 months, and the doctors had to drill holes in his skull to relieve the pressure of swelling inside the skull after the injury. Brain injuries are very slow to heal and may never recover completely. My dad had to relearn language and how to swallow food again.

A physical therapist may be able to help some if there are other reasons for falling that are related to loss of strength. Have you talked to your doctor about physical conditioning? Would you consider being proactive and trying a wheelchair? My mom uses one because she has pain in her feet and difficulty walking and has no balance. She lives alone, and if she tried to walk, she would end up falling, so she decided to have a wheelchair to maintain her independence. She has severe osteoporosis and a fall in the past broke her pelvis in 3 places and her foot. She spent 3 months in a nursing home rehab, and then went through foot surgery because all the tendons shortened and her foot twisted. That helped her be able to put her foot flat on the floor again, but she is still severely disabled and walking is painful and very difficult. Prevention could have saved a lot of pain and disability. It also affects the entire family because I've had to live with my parents and take care of them when they could not take care of themselves.