Servay for people who have had surgery for herniated disk .?

I just recently had the surgery done on my neck a month ago for a disk herniation and another month before i can feel "the difference" if im in the 85% range. I also have degenerative disk disease and central stenosis (wich i have no idea to the seriousness of this). So far all this surgery did was take away the pain on my shoulders and arms. Now i have continuous pain on my upper back. The procceedure for surgery was removing the herniated disk and fusing the interbody lumbar using a metal plate as part of the fusion. I dont see my doctor until next month for a check up. Im going to have to go through this again on my lower back sometime in the near future. With this being said, im asking you what proceedure did u go through? And if you can start with a 1=, being satisfactory or 0=, being unsatisfactory. I thank you for youre time.

First - a month isn't near enough time to judge your surgery. After my fusion I was in a brace for 5 months. You have a ways to go yet.
Second - of course your shoulders & arms feel better. The pressure on the nerve that was causing the pain is gone. That is what the surgery did. It removed the part of the disc that was causing the pressure on the nerve....not the whole disc.
Third - asking others about their surgeries can be dangerous because their situation might have been much worse or much better than yours. In other words....it's not good to try to compare yourself to someone else and expect to have the same results. Having said that....it's probably better that I don't answer any more. ;-)

Just do as your doc tells you, try not to be stubborn, and prepare for a lot of horizontal time. Get some puzzle books or something to occupy you. Take care.

Good luck.

Do research on the net for DDD and stenosis--that way, you'll have some good questions to ask the doc next time you see him/her. A month is not long enough to judge how successful this surgery was--I'm assuming you haven't even started the physical therapy adjunct to the surgery. When you do, be consistent and disciplined or the results you could have had won't be there! I had 4 microdiscectomies on L4/5 and 2 on L5/S1. When L4/5 blew the 5th time, I had a fusion of L4/5 and L5/S1. Prior to the fusion, the micros would provide relief for awhile....however, it got to the point where I lived in "7/8" pain with 100mg MS Contin twice a day. I told the doc I'd be happy if the pain came down to 4 and I could reduce, if not eliminate the opiate. Fusion was in June 2004, and I'm now living at 3--5 on the pain scale, with only 30 mg ms twice a day, with occasional breakthrough pain. Because I waited so long (fusion was initially suggested when I was 38; I was 53 when I finally accepted reality), I have a lot of scar tissue and mangled nerves, resulting in neuropathy in one leg, which sometimes "goes out" from under me. If I had to do it all over again, I would have had this procedure done when I was 38, even though it would have been an abdominal entry as opposed to back entry. Your doctor has seen plenty of cases like yours--I would suggest you trust him/her to advise you rather than a bunch of strangers in cyber world. Good luck, sending clarity your way.