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Posted by Jim
In Reply to: Two bulging and herniated discs in my lumbar spine posted by Jim McGowan
Jim:
I have the same set of symptoms that you described: arthritis of my entire
back, stiff, painful as hell and "with me for life". I also had a herniated
disk at L4/L5 that had to be removed. Here are the answers to your
questions -- but as it happened to me. Everyone's different, so take my
answers as very individual.
1 - My recovery was divided into three phases: (a) for three or four days
after surgery, I was bedridden and for another three or four days I moved
about real slow.
(b) For about the next six to eight weeks I moved about freely, drove a
car, did some stretching, but absolutely nothing strenuous.
(c) For the next six months I slowly got back all the functionality and
strength that I had before the disk was herniated. But it took the full six
months before it all came back. I have to qualify the words "all came
back": since I have OA of the spine as you do, I came back to the
functionality of a spine with OA. I couldn't run around like a
twenty-something, but I have the full functionality of a fifty-something!
2 - My total recovery then was about eight months; although 80% of it came
in the first three or four months.
3 - I was incapacitated for only the one week after the surgery. But I
couldn't do anything strenuous for about eight weeks.
4 - My real pain was in my "head", waiting and waiting for the functionality
to come back. The other pain was my old friend OA of the spine, but that's
always there.
The surgery itself only hurt for the first week.
Plz keep in mind that people are highly individual in how they respond to
back surgery.
My case should be viewed as one in a million.
