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Spine surgery L5/S1 cage wedge / L3-5 screws & rods to align
Seeking advice, insight and learning about cost/benefit of spine surgery and outcomes. The big questions are can I tolerate the surgeries and whether or not would I substantially benefit from orthopedic surgery.
Orthopedic surgeon proposed 2 surgeries performed over 2 days: frontal surgery (-4 hours) for L5/S1 cage and wedge to alleviate compression and back surgery (~4 hours) L3-5 screws and rods to stabilize and align lumbar region.
Other considerations, age 70 & Parkinson’s disease.
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Hello. While I am only 58, I just recently (March 30th/31st) had this surgery performed over two days to relieve shooting pain down the back of my legs and back pain when trying to stand up. The surgery 100% fixed the pain it was supposed to and for a 58 year old male who is fairly sedentary, the recovery was not that bad.
However, in MY case the L5-S1 surgery appears to have caused my L2-L3 disc to bulge, applying pressure on the nerves going to my legs which caused constant excruciating pain. So, on Tuesday of last week I had a laminectomy on L2-L3, which has relieved the pain but has somehow has caused me to lose strength in my thighs and has caused me to have foot drop in my right foot. It is still too soon to know why this occurred, but I just wanted to throw my situation at you for comparison.