I wish her very well...
Unfortunately, I had the same surgery and fused L3/4/5 (2 rods, 6 pedicle screws). I was home almost a week and felt great, pain free, a half inch taller, and I went from a walker to a cane in 3 days, when they told me it'd be anywhere from 1-3 months.
Then about a week later I didn't start feeling so good, and I was "leaking" something fierce. It feel like I had a soda can in my back, it hurt like hell and I couldn't get even remotely comfortable.
Woke up the next day with a slight fever and called the surgeon's PA to get a scrip for the obvious infection that I had...my fever literally climbed as the hours ticked by and I started having seizures (which may explain some of my posts!
). By 5 that afternoon I told my wife to call 911 (in between seizures of course) and they brought me back to the hospital that did the surgery, right down the road from our home. I was there less than 15 minutes, and the ER attending told the paramedics that brought me to get me to "real" hospital but quick. There was close to 50cc of garbage that had leaked from my back onto the gurney during the 5 minute or so ride...
At the "real" hospital I was in the NICU (neuro ICU) for a week. For about 3 days I wasn't gonna make it. My temperature spiked over 106 and one of the nurses (who was a former Navy SEAL that I actually ended up knowing through a mutual friend of ours) flipped out on the on-call neuro.
Oh I had an infection all right, and it was directly on my spinal cord (hence the seizures). It occurred in a dirty O.R. and once my back was sewn up the bacteria had a party in there...
I had a "clean out" surgery and an unscheduled in room "emergency" procedure. I was discharged straight to the street even though it was recommended that I go to a nursing home for at least a month or so. The doctor that did the first surgery literally disappeared; no returned phone calls, etc.
I sat and rotted in my house for almost 3 months taking pain medication like clockwork. When the surgeon did get around to see me he suggested a scrip for Oxycotin to deal with the pain since Percocet was a joke. No thanks. My dad had 1/3 his lung cut out for cancer and he said the worst part of it was getting off that junk. I was taking 1500mg of Cipro a day for 8 weeks. Not days, weeks. That the shit they give you if you're infected with anthrax. That's unheard of. My blood tests (which I had to get done every week to make sure the infection was getting knocked down) read like results from someone who had actually died from an acute infection. The world was not that lucky...
Haven't been the same since, and because my fusion has failed I need a do-over (which I'm really looking forward to
). My back is the worst it's even been (still work out 6 days a week though) and because of the failure my spine has partially "collapsed"/misaligned causing a new herniation. My L2/3 disc space is 4 times larger than what's considered normal. Because of that I may need a 4 level fusion, and from what I'm hearing now it will be anterior (going through the "front") in addition to posterior (which is what I had the last time). I may end up with 4 rods and 16 pedicle screws total...
It's been almost two full years. Physical Therapy twice a week, meds, and epideral injections in my spine every 4-6 weeks. That's a joy...
And the sage continues, with no conceivable end in sight. Awesome. :top:
Again, best of luck to her, I'm the exception, not the rule...
