K. & Edie - follow-up questions

[Guest guest]

One point of clarification...

This has been my BIGGEST quandary! When you say " I think we both

agree that the surgery immediately took care of the nerve pain, but

did nothing for the flatback condition, " what do you mean? I've had

numerous trigger point injections (some helpful, some not) an

epidural (horrible), 2 rounds of rhizotomies (last summer/fall) with

some pain relief but not complete. I talked with my local OS about

this very matter in detail and he basically said that there are no

guarantees, but it might help me to " get by " for awhile longer. He

said that I have the arthritis of a 70-year-old and that the

arthritic (DDD) pain will still be there even with the laminectomy.

Is this kinda what you mean? Also, I am scared that if I schedule

the laminectomy and then it takes longer to recover and doesn't

give me enough pain relief to do my job comfortably, then I won't

have any leave time left for revision surgery.

I feel like I am whining and I hate that. Perhaps my real question

is this...What was the scariest thing to you about going through

with the revision surgery right off the bat? I feel like I am

overlooking some signficant detail that makes the two so different

and makes the laminectomy seem wiser.

Thank you so much to both of you for going over and over and over

this with me!!!

kam