In a recently published article, Carson Daly of the Today Show shared that after trying many different methods of pain relief, he finally relented and chose surgery (Anterior Lumbar Fusion) to relieve his lower back pain.
Category - surgery
Chronic pain has a way of grinding away at our resolve and for those who have had lingering issues after surgery, pain can drastically affect our mental health. And recent research through the Mayo clinic reveals that spine surgery patients have a higher risk of post–spinal surgery depression.
This month marks 5 years since my last surgery, an L4-L5 discectomy which followed a L5-S1 Laminectomy and an L1-L2 Schwannoma removal in 2011. Along with degenerating discs and spinal stenosis, my recovery has been long, on-going and something I need to work on every day.
For years, when describing my back issues, I mixed up the terms bulging disc with herniated disc and vice versa. It wasn’t until a neurosurgeon corrected me that I learned that though both conditions deal with disc impingements, each was a separate problem with separate solutions.
Failed back surgery syndrome (or failed back syndrome) is a general term to describe an unsuccessful back surgery. These patients continue to feel pain after they’ve had a surgical spine procedure and can experience a wide range of symptoms which may include chronic pain in the back, neck, or legs, which could be either dull or sharp, aching, tingling, burning, or radiating. In my case, it was a buildup of scar tissue around spinal nerve roots which caused a a considerable amount of discomfort around the surgical area.
With the rise of podcasts as a platform for free-flowing dialogue and discussion, Here’s some of the most informative and enlightening conversations with doctors and medical professionals about the various types of back pain ( conditions / injuries), treatments and new medical advances in spinal care.
Due to popular demand, I bring you 5 more stories of people who have recently undergone back surgery and are well on their way to recovery.
So…in a moment of self-pity, you googled ‘famous people with bad backs’ and this blog-post popped up. It’s completely understandable. Many of us want to feel like we’re not the only ones going through this – and in some strange way, knowing that President John F Kennedy had a horrible spine condition helps us realize that perhaps we can also accomplish great things despite days when we’re hunched over like Quasimodo.
“If you took 100 people off the street and gave them MRIs, a third of them — even if they had no back pain whatsoever — would have obvious structural problems,” says Dr. Charles Rosen, M.D., clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine.
Wellness and mindfulness are definitely buzzwords these days that tap into an eastern philosophy of establishing awareness on the present moment. After cycling through surgeries, medicines and traditional forms of Western therapies, I’ve begun exploring yoga, meditation and natural remedies and so far, these alternative approaches to healing have had a positive impact on how I manage chronic pain.