Orthopaedic assessment

[Amdrew]

hi folks, I'm looking for some advice, I was at the hospital yesterday about the results of my MRI I recived in January, the outcome of the conversation with the surgeon was that I had somthing called nerve blocker injections in advance to a second operation, the previous was a diskectomy on L4/L5. 5 year previous, which made me actually worse and was given all the pain clinic medications, the result of the new MRI is that the damage is now at the L5/S1 disk location, any advice would be appreciated

thanks.

[RAYJAYC]

Hi Amdrew

Have I got this correct; five years ago you had a 'nerve block' injection and then went on to having an L4/5 discectomy and now your most recent MRI is showing a disc herniation/prolapse at L5/S1?

Unfortunately, having a discectomy at any level can cause the disc below it to have problems. Have you been told your L5/S1 disc has lost height & water, herniated or prolapsed too? Are you getting pain in that area? Any pins & needles in your leg/s?

I know I'm asking lots of questions but you don't say exactly what type of help & advice you need. If it's whether you should have more surgery then you'll get lots of different replies describing varying degrees of success!

Or do you just need further explanation of what the consultant has told you?

We're all experiencing pain on here and will help you as much as we can to one or all of your queries & worries! Let us know what it is we can help you with and you'll probably get lots of replies; no end of support here 😊

RAYJAYC

[Amdrew in reply to RAYJAYC]

Hi RAYJAYC, thanks for the reply, apologies for not being specific, so from the very beginning was in a car accident in 1985 and got all the usual Gp stuff for years, plus osteopaths and phyisos, in 2000 I changed GP who was a bit more knowledgeable about back injuries and after a number of other tests I got a MRI which showed a L4/L5 disk bulge, after 10 years of epidural/cortisone injections about 9 in total I was having difficulty's with walking because of the back pain and sciatica flair ups, in 2010 I was given the diskectiomy at L4/L5, the procedure was not a success, in fact it made the back and leg pain worse, and was put on tramadol, gabapentinine, amotriptoline, and currently take about 24 tables per day, as of last year the lower back pain has been excruciating and the pain clinic changed the pain meds, as walking, sitting, standing, getting out of a chair, and turning in bed were torcher, I was sent for a new MRI in January and just got the results yesterday, at the hospital I spoke with the surgeon who carried out the procedure in 2010, we discussed my option and any more operation's on L4/L5 were completely ruled out, it was then confirmed that the back pain and sciatica spasms' were caused now by L5/S1 and shown the difference between the 2 MRI scans, I have now been told I will need another procedure on this but before that I need to get the nerve blocker injections to allow the surgeon to fix the issue at the exact place, I'm wondering if anyone has gone through this as I want to know a bit more about the nerve blocker situation, I also asked if fusing both L4/L5 to S1 was an option.

again thanks for the help

[RAYJAYC in reply to Amdrew]

Ah ok, I understand now. I've had the nerve block injectionsbut they weren't successful; didn't make any difference! I've had three lots of surgery, L4/5 discectomy, L4/5 revision & L3/4 discectomy. The first and third were 'emergency' surgeries but even though they helped with the acute pain & issues, unfortunately, I'm left with chronic pain from the surgery. I've also got DDD so it explains what's been going on, to a point but sadly I'm not able to give you a 'success story'!!

I'm sure you'll get different 'reviews' and hopefully some real success stories!!

Best of luck to you.

RAYJAYC