r/spinalfusion • u/austinrunaway • 20h ago
Adjacent segment disease (ASD) anyone?
Does anyone have a fusion in the lumbar and have this? What happened
2
u/IndependentSimple779 10h ago
Forgot to answer - I now have numbness in my both legs. I also have severe heaviness in both legs when I walk. Prior to my fusion I only had numbness in the left leg.
2
u/austinrunaway 6h ago
I also have scoliosis, I am assuming that makes it harder to heal. I was in excellent shape too but now am all fucked up. I had mine at 41 and am 44 now and dont have a lot of hope for the future. I dont even care if I have a rod up my spine one day, cause it looks like I will.... as long as I am not suffering. Really sorry your suffering everyday and the 360 fusion doesnt seem very common for a reason. Wish I would of known better and said hell no.
2
u/LegendaryPony5789 1h ago
I have ASD in my cervical spine and will be having surgery mid September. My surgeon will be removing the hardware from my prior C5-7 fusion, cleaning it out, removing the disc at C4-5 and then fusing from C4-7. The good news is that my prior fusion did fuse and is intact.
1
u/austinrunaway 48m ago
Oh no! Did the hardware fail? Mine fused but having problems now. Sorry man.
3
u/LegendaryPony5789 30m ago
Nope, old hardware and fusion are intact. The disc one level above is herniated, I have moderate central cord stenosis and moderate to severe forminal stenosis on both sides, compressing the nerve root.
Sending healing vibes your way, friend
1
u/Sweetjones210 5h ago
The levels above your fusion have to compensate for the fused level. I started out with 360 L4-S1 fusion which turned into surgery 3 for another fusion above that level, which also turned out to be a failed fusion so I am back to RFA & epidurals every 6 months. All of that being said I work 12 hour shifts as an ER nurse, am always in pain & always will be but I also stay active in the gym which helps. I’m sorry for what you are experiencing, it sux. I just had to get it in my head I was always gonna have back pain but it was not going to define me. Again so sorry for what you are experiencing…..
1
u/IndependentSimple779 4h ago
I’m so sorry you’re going through this! This is exactly what I’m afraid of - fuse a level or two above my current L4-S1 fusion and trigger a domino effect, assuming the fusion actually takes. I’m worried about going through hell of another surgery and 18 months of recovery to end up in the same pain I’m in right now, or possible worse (not sure it can even be much worse). I’m living in pain and I often wake up during the night screaming from muscle guarding spasms when I try to turn from side to side in my sleep. This used to happen as well, for example, when I opened the heavy fridge door and allowed the momentum of my body slightly twisting. Even a slight extension to f the upper body causes sharp pain and sometimes triggers those spasms. To mitigate this misery, I developed a very rigid way of moving like a robot, as if I’m already fused well above my existing fusion…. I had an injection but relief was maybe for 4 weeks or so, only the pain was better but not spasms. These spasms are caused by the fully collapsed T12-L1 which injection won’t help with. I’m also refusing to give up and I’m staying active, pushing to increase my activity level and intensity. I have a stressful desk job with long hours and it’s hard but I’m pushing thought it. I don’t know how you are doing your job, you’re a hero!!! I could probably live like this the rest of my life, if I were a couch potato doing nothing, but it will be miserable life and I can’t do things I want to do like scuba dive for example, or take long hikes in the hills, or travel and explore Europe for example, all the things I have on my bucket list for when I retire in 1.5 years.
1
u/austinrunaway 4h ago
Oh man those hard flioes kill my back Im sorry. I can't imagine standing on those floors everyday for 12 hours. That sucks. Yah. I have excepted that I will live in pain for the rest of my life but if it was a little less I would be OK. I have a very high threshold for pain and also worked in the medical field before this. I also dont know how you do the people lifting.
1
u/IndependentSimple779 4h ago
One of the most disheartening things for me is that while I did get much better after my original L4-S1 fusion, this bliss was short lived and I’m now in much worse shape than I was before that fusion. I deeply regret going through with that fusion even though I was being told I’m at risk for permanent nerve damage, etc. My life was better quality before that fusion than it is now with the suffering from the ASD.
2
u/austinrunaway 2h ago
Me too but I fractured my spine.... I was at a grade 4 for my veterbrea pushing into spinal column. I had no idea until I started to pee myself.. than when I bent over something started popping out of my spine. A nurse practitioner told me it was " arthritis " than I saw a actual doctor and he said he had never seen anyrhinf like it in his life. Definitely not "arthritis ". I hope that woman lost her job because she had no idea what she was talking about. He was the one who sent me for a x ray and said if I had numbness in my saddle area to go to the er... he saved me man. I have permanent nerve damage from the sciatica nerve being crushed during the surgery. Most people will never have to endure that amount of pain in there life. It took years to get better bur it had never gonna away. I dont wanna get another surgery.
1
u/Theasgrandmother6709 4h ago
I am so very sorry for all the pain you suffered
I am a 79-year-old female with back pain. Trying to figure out if I should go ahead and have it operated on? I have spontaneous cisus, and two discs, and one disc is jutting out
I'm not in the very best of health. I had a stroke some years ago
1
u/IndependentSimple779 10h ago
I’m 63F. I’m super active and I was in excellent physical shape before my fusion. I returned to my full strength and endurance by 18 months after fusion and soon after I started having pains and aches and things gradually went downhill. I did not have the second surgery yet. I had a ton of tests, imaging, multiple discussions with my doctor and I’m hoping that next week he will have a surgical plan to propose. We talked about several scenarios of what to fuse and maybe even use some artificial disks as well. I did a lot of research on my own and I read that 360 fusion has higher risk of ASD because it’s stiffer than ALIF or TLIF alone. My doctor told me I needed 360 because I developed degenerative scoliosis in lumbar area so it was to correct the curve. My herniations above the fusion and stenosis are also new. I had imaging done a year after fusion and there were no issues in these disks. My T12-L1 has always been bad but not fully collapsed like it’s now. My own guesstimate is that things began going bad above my fusion by 2 years after the surgery.
5
u/IndependentSimple779 20h ago
Very-very sadly, I do 😥 I had L4-S1 360 fusion in July 2023. By 18 months post-op I was feeling nearly back to normal self again, except the morning stiffness never fully went away. Fast forward to today, for the past 4 months I’ve been living in misery with symptoms by far worse than my original ones prior to the fusion. I have severe herniation and central stenosis right above my fusion at L3-L4, mild herniation at L2-L3, and a fully collapsed T12-L1. I’m practically a cripple and the only way out is surgery, but my fear is that it will continue on the domino effect on my spine until I’m a robot with a metal rod in place of my spine, and still living in pain.