Deciding on surgery

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone, thank you for this wonderful forum. I am 35 years old and had two

fusions in '89 and '90 for scoliosis, performed by Dr. Emans at Boston

Children's Hospital, using a version of the Harrington rods that Dr. Emans came

up with (I can't recall the exact name of the modified rods). Not sure of the

exact vertebrae but I'm fused from the base of my neck to my waist.

In the intervening years I always had some pain, usually if I was sitting for

many hours as on a bus or plane... however, in the past 2-3 years the pain has

increased to where I'm stooped over and hurting after a couple hours at my desk

(bad thing too as I'm a computer programmer!) and it takes an hour or so of

walking around to straighten up. I've also had lots of knee issues that have

gotten worse over the years and I've long suspected that was somehow related.

I finally called for a follow up appointment (after a couple years of putting it

off out of fear); waiting for them to call back with a date. In the meantime,

I'm trying to educate myself which brought me here.

I'm wondering: if you had revision surgery, how did you decide it was 'bad

enough' that you needed it? Is it better to put off revision surgery as long as

possible or does putting it off cause further damage? From what I read, a lot

of the determination for 'needing' surgery is based on pain, and I have a huge

pain tolerance and I'm not sure I trust my own perception as an indicator (I

walked around with two torn ACLs for about a year before I saw a doctor, as an

example!)

I realize I may be putting the cart ahead of the horse here but I'm trying to

kill my fear with information prior to my appointment Thanks and I look

forward to reading more of the great info presented here.