Hi All,
I found this forum after my surgical consult this summer and I want to thank all of you for bravely sharing your stories, the good, bad and ugly. I initially thought I would just do the surgery and didn't want to know too much about it because I knew it would be hard and figured knowing all the gory details would only make me worry unnecessarily. But what the surgeon told me popped my happy bubble. He said I would need a fusion from T-1 to L-5, anterior and posterior and that it would take 6-8 hours and I would likely need at least 4 units of blood.
I was shell shocked after that, I really had no idea it would be that big of a surgery. So I turned to the internet and found you. And thought about it more. And did more internet searches with the names of local surgeons and the word 'BOMEX', which is our board of medical examiners and discovered that patients have died from this surgery here and one spine specialist even lost his license due to multiple bad outcomes.
So I realized that I needed to consider the surgeon very carefully, this is no gallbladder surgery that most surgeons do very well. I just saw a second spine surgeon, Bill Stevens and he told me yes, when I asked him if he thought surgery would be a good idea for me. I trust his ability, he does one and only one of these a week because he said it's long and exhausting. So I'm looking at probably being scheduled for January, but need a DEXA scan and another consult before I can get on the schedule.
I had a traction X-ray this week and it only improved my curve 10 degrees out of 70. So my curve is stiff and he says I have lumbar kyphosis which needs to be balanced. I'm so ready to do this, wish I could do this sooner but also secretly glad I get to have a nice Christmas with my family. Don't really want to scare my 31 yo daughter who also has scoli but lives far away now. Wishing I had done this 4 years ago when a different surgeon talked me out of it as I was premenopausal then which would have been in my favor.
Thanks for listening, I'm happy to have found you!
Liz
AP Jul 2014.JPG
I found this forum after my surgical consult this summer and I want to thank all of you for bravely sharing your stories, the good, bad and ugly. I initially thought I would just do the surgery and didn't want to know too much about it because I knew it would be hard and figured knowing all the gory details would only make me worry unnecessarily. But what the surgeon told me popped my happy bubble. He said I would need a fusion from T-1 to L-5, anterior and posterior and that it would take 6-8 hours and I would likely need at least 4 units of blood.
I was shell shocked after that, I really had no idea it would be that big of a surgery. So I turned to the internet and found you. And thought about it more. And did more internet searches with the names of local surgeons and the word 'BOMEX', which is our board of medical examiners and discovered that patients have died from this surgery here and one spine specialist even lost his license due to multiple bad outcomes.
So I realized that I needed to consider the surgeon very carefully, this is no gallbladder surgery that most surgeons do very well. I just saw a second spine surgeon, Bill Stevens and he told me yes, when I asked him if he thought surgery would be a good idea for me. I trust his ability, he does one and only one of these a week because he said it's long and exhausting. So I'm looking at probably being scheduled for January, but need a DEXA scan and another consult before I can get on the schedule.
I had a traction X-ray this week and it only improved my curve 10 degrees out of 70. So my curve is stiff and he says I have lumbar kyphosis which needs to be balanced. I'm so ready to do this, wish I could do this sooner but also secretly glad I get to have a nice Christmas with my family. Don't really want to scare my 31 yo daughter who also has scoli but lives far away now. Wishing I had done this 4 years ago when a different surgeon talked me out of it as I was premenopausal then which would have been in my favor.
Thanks for listening, I'm happy to have found you!
Liz
AP Jul 2014.JPG
Comment