Post-Surgical Pain and Resolution of Numbness (was: Frustrated)

[Guest guest]

One of the things that had been concerning me was that my pain level was still so high. I've been reading through the post-op stories from the files section, and something from Cam's story aught my attention. You mentioned that Dr. Rand said that " generally he sees the best results

when dealing with straightforward degenerative discs… basically

that the decompression gets the pain. " And then you (Cam) went on to say " So I guess I understood that

stenosis or more significant scar tissue may play a role in the

ability to really clear up residual pain. " Were you saying that Dr. Rand was saying that it would typically take longer for pain to resolve in patients who had significant stenosis pre-surgery? If that's the case, that may be at least part of my problem. My lumbar stenosis was quite serous by the time I agreed to surgery.

I also had/have large areas of numbness on both my back and stomach post-surgery. The numbness on my stomach has not resolved at all, but I really don't care because being able to feel the area immediately below my belly button isn't really a huge priority of mine. If every problem but that resolves, I'll consider myself extremely lucky!

I also have large areas of numbness on my back, butt it sounds like this is extremely common. Small spots at the edges of these numb areas are starting to regain feeling, but as they do, those same areas have a lot of soft tissue soreness/pain. Is this a typical stage for the tissue to go through?

I went to bed last night, and just couldn't get myself to get out of bed this morning. There wasn't a specific reason, but I just couldn't bring myself to get up. The good news is that I felt so much better once I finally got up. Perhaps my body was trying to tell me something, and thus it was good that I listened. I got out of bed and was immediately was able to move around pretty easily, and with much less pain than on the last several days. And no, I'm not going to be stupid about this and try to do too much while I'm feeling better. I want to stay feeling this way, not ruin it!

I hope everyone is having a good day, C.Boston, MA

Surgeon: Dr. Glazer5.5 weeks post-opL3-S1 fusion plus removal   and replacement of old hardware