Very true and valid points, I appreciate your perspective on this.

On a unrelated note:

To clarify the reason I am unable to currently drive my Porsche..even in a slow or mellow manner. It has to do with the way the nerve roots are being pressed upon by the slipped discs. Any seat that pushes my shoulder blades even slightly forward on my spine, completely cuts off that nerve and sends pretty intense pain down its branchs. My doc doesn't want any of this nerve damage to be permanent, so he wants me to avoid anything that causes this motion.


Dan

 

I can't imagine how this must be for you. Thank you, though, for the perspective as i know i often take for granted those things you now must think about from moment to moment. Wishing you well soon. Try not to think too much about the car. She'll be there for you when you're well again i am certain.

 

I don't know you but on my next prayer my thoughts will be with you. I love driving and one of my worst nightmare is to not be able to do so any longer.

Wish you good luck.

 

Hi Dan,

ACDF is the only treatment. The other option is bedrest and hope that the disc will return to original position, but you still have the defect there that will recur.

I'm afraid the surgeries that you booked for your patients may aggravate your problem, as we all know the prolonged neck flexion posture of a surgeon during an operation.

I'm only a GP, so I cannot suggest anything more useful, but like the others, I wish you all the best and a speedy recovery.

 

Damn it, Tim. I wish you didn't know what you were talking about so I could just ignore you!

Thanks for the well wishes everybody. My staff is trying to book me a bit lighter, so today I saw 46 patients. Interestingly enough, I didn't notice my pain once during the time I was seeing patients and only noticed it when I got home. Must mean I really enjoy what I do, which I do.

It's not even the money that's driving me to keep on booking and committing to doing cases. I could easily cut back to 1 day a week until I have my surgery and NWML would pick up the difference in my overhead and income after 30 days.

It's that I love my job, love my patients, and really love doing surgery. Today I booked 6 more cases, all centered around the patients Thanksgiving or Christmas breaks. If I can just make it to January 1st, things always tend to slow down a bit then. Plus, I need to figure out how locum tenens works so I can keep my practice going when I'm out.



.

 

I wish you the best for your recovery Dan. Do not sell your car , she one of a kind.

 

Sorry to hear about your health and wish you a fast recovery. I had a scare earlier this year and you're so right about taking good health for granted and reevaluating things when it's called into question.

 

Sorry for you bad luck. I am a pain management physician. What levels are herniated? If you truely have severe spinal stenosis then waiting 3 months will just further damage the spinal nerves. The likelyhood of you gaining full neurological recovery goes down with time. IMHO you would be much better off getting the ACDF done ASAP so that you are more likely to be able to do surgery on your patients in the future. What if the delay in your surgery leads to poor neuronal regrowth which leads to you losing your hand dexterity. An EMG/NCV by a WELL QUALIFIED physician will help answer the question.

Btw, the major issue with tracking a car post fusion is the limited cervical ROM. If you can have atleast 45 degrees of rotation then you can still track cars. You might not want to do W2W racing but you can surely due DE's. True you *might* accelerate degeneration at other levels. However, I seriously doubt you want to give up your passion in life for 20 years and then realize oops I could have tracked all long.

P.S. - If you are a smoker then quit ASAP!

Well that enough advise for now. I'm sure everybody including your dog and kids are giving you advise at the moment. PM if you have any questions.

 

Dan,
Sorry to hear about your recent turn of events in your life. You are not alone. I speak for a close friend of mine who had somewhat of a similar accident but not working out but surfing. He was with several other local boys out of Hawaii who took a surfing trip to Indonesia. They were boated out to waves near a sandbar and started to surf for a couple of days. After getting their fill of perfect waves, the last day he had a feeling not to go surfing as it was a relatively small day. His friends coached him into joining them for the morning with only four of them out that morning. As he was surfing a small 3' wave, he fell off gently and hit the water. He knew something was wrong as he struggled to the surface realizing his feet were not moving. He doesn't know how he made it to the surface but somehow, maybe God led him to the top. He manage to make eye contact with his friend and with a breath called out to him for help in a struggling voice which his friend thought he was joking. He managed to surface for the last time as his efforts to keep himself afloat had exhausted himself not being able to use his legs and now his arms. For some odd reason, his friend saw that look in his eyes and knew that his friend was in trouble and went to his rescue. TO make a long story short, thank God they were near a sandbar and walked him some 1/2 mile in and transported him some 45 minutes to a clinic as there were no hospitals around. He was paralyzed as a disc in his back had ruptured. He went to surgery back in Hawaii and did not surf again and is very thankful that he didn't drown out there alone. He is now on a 10 month leave and recuperating and knows how a split second can change your life. The docs here told him that he can snap it again and will be paralyzed for life. He is in good hands, healthy but had to adjust to a new type of living. Hang in there Dan! You are not alone and you will get better. Keep the faith!!!

 

1. Thank you for this post. After my wife read it this morning she completely reamed me out as she has been saying the same thing for the past 4 weeks. Today I spoke with a top neurosurgeon in our area and he wants to see me tomorrow or Friday according to my schedule (very kind!) I plan on seeing him Friday. I severly herniated C5-C6 (complete stenosis on MRI), and to a lesser degree C6-C7.

2. Thank you for you encouraging post. It's nice to talk to doctors and other neck fusion patients about this who actually like to track their own cars. I got a great PM from another internist on this board, Rick Lopes, who gave me similar encouragment regarding returning to the track post surgery. You guys are the first people to start talking about tracking after surgery and that gives me a ton of hope.


3. Thanks for the advice on smoking. Luckily I never picked up that nasty habit, so I'm good there. I give my patients the same talk about smoking when I do surgery, especially when I'm trying to fuse some joints in the lower extremity.

4. At this point, I am going to hold off on selling my car. I never wanted to sell it to begin with. If I am ever going to track again, there is no car that I would want more, than the car I currently have. It was only because I thought tracking would be a *slim* possibility rather than a *more than likely* scenario, I was thinking of selling. I will see how I feel after surgery before I put this baby up for sale. Much like many of you are with your own cars....this car is worth more to me, than it would to someone else.


Thanks again everyone for sharing all of your positive experiences and helping talking me out of prematurely selling my car.


Dan

 

This makes me sad to read this and I have never even read one post of yours before.
It makes me feel lucky to have just sold my car that I got 50% return on, am unemployed but...have perfect health (as far as I know).
Good luck in your choices, I wish I had some advice but I for once do not.

Sincerely,

Marty K

 

Hi Dan, I've been following this thread since you started it. I'm a fellowship trained spine surgeon. With your degree of pain and functional limitations surgery is an appropriate option as long as the imaging studies match your symptoms. What to expect:
1) the radicular pain is typically gone immediately
2) numbness, tingling, weakness may take longer depending on the degree of nerve dysfunction
3) the surgery is typically performed with the placement of a plate/screw construct to stabilize the area while healing.
4) I would expect you'd be able to resume office hours ~2wks after surgery and your surgical schedule 2-4 weeks after surgery (depending on your comfort level)
5) typically the postop discomfort is much less than your preop radicular pain
6) DO NOT SELL YOUR CAR! You will be able to fully resume your activities once healed and rehabilitated.

Good luck

 

What a perfect guy to be hearing from...a fellowship trained spine surgeon, and based on your cars, a hardcore GT3RS driver. Thanks for the encouraging words and for reinforcing that I don't sell my baby. Furthurmore, it is great to hear you say I *will* be back tracking my car. That is awesome to hear. Since I haven't been able to drive my Porsches even on the street, this is music to my ears. Its also great to know the radicular pain resolves so quickly. I have only slept for 3-5 hours/night for the past 4 weeks. I haven't done anyting like that since I finished my surgical residencies over a decade ago!

Thanks for the the medical advice as well. Do you accept BC/BS PPO for online consultations? If so, I'll go ahead and apologize for them only reimbursing you 50% of your charges. .


The appointment with the neurosurgeon got moved up to noon today, as soon as he finishes his morning cases.

Dan

 

ask the surgeon for a medrol dose pack (if you haven't had one)....it may quiet things down a bit waiting to fix it. Good luck....you will do well

 

Dan, It sounds like you have made the decision to keep your car. Great News.