Overall rates of long term improvement after spinal surgery for severe chronic lower back pain are about two thirds; between 60% and 70%. It varies slightly depending on the type and origin of the pain. That is, whether it is from stenosis associated with leg pain, herniated lumbar discs, often also with radicular/leg pain, or instability/deformity.

I have all of them, and that combination often results in pain which is both crushing and debilitating. Anti-inflammatories and painkillers, even including opiates, which I take sparingly, never remove the pain. It is constant. They do relieve it enough at night for me to get to sleep, though they don’t last through the night, so pain wakes me with a cheery hello early in the morning. This means tiredness and fogginess are becoming an issue.

I have been able to push through this over the last few years. But now pain not only affects what I can do physically, but my mental power to continue to learn and create, and even my will to do so. Everything about me is drained and diminished.

My doctor has suggested consulting with a spinal/orthopaedic surgeon, but I have met and spoken to so many people who had no improvement after spinal surgery, and in some case became far worse, including affecting mobility, that this could only be an absolute last resort.

Spinal surgery is often not the best option

Maybe the innovation in treatment discussed at the link will offer some hope. If so I may consider it. But real hope lies elsewhere. I wrote a poem about this which I have copied below:

The Narrowing Room

The pain moves in and drowns the hopes in me,

until I lose the thought I meant to hold;

it dims the page, it darkens all I see,

and turns the warmth I loved to fear and cold.

I cannot sit, or stand, or walk for long

before the fire climbs and claims the hour;

it drains the will that shaped my life’s true song,

and leaves me stripped of purpose, stripped of power.

I hear you speak, but half the words are gone;

I long to help, though love now costs so dear

and talk, once welcome, now a door half-drawn,

as all my rooms grow small, my sight less clear.

In this small room the days repeat their weight,

where loneliness sits close as laughter’s fled;

the mind grows dim, dark thoughts accumulate,

and emptiness keeps quiet watch beside my bed.

To follow Christ is not the crown alone,

but bearing too the cross He carried first;

His victory and His suffering are one

to share His life is to embrace the worst.

So let this pain, in patience gently borne,

be offered up, and kindness still supplied;

though costly, let it never turn to scorn,

but be the gift that draws me to His side.

For even here, small gaps let mercy in

I feel His wounds, and there new life begins.

https://sharingfromisrael.substack.com/p/spinal-fusion-without-screws-israel