Friend #1: 9 back surgeries, 7 of them fusions. He has a congenitally horsecrap spine aggravated by playing football in college, doing stunts in Hollywood, and finally breaking his neck in a riding accident. For him, fusions were necessary to keep him out of a wheelchair. After about 10 years, because a fusion reconfigures stresses on the spine, it’s pretty automatic that you’ll need another. The key to fusions isn’t how many you’ll have, but whether they’re done early on enough to be of help, before you have a ton of nerve root or cord damage. Once you wait too long and the damage is already done, they prevent a person from becoming paralyzed, but they can’t “help” much in terms of pain or numbness. But pain can be dealt with fairly effectively through pain management, if the core function is solid and not degrading. With 9 back surgeries in 31 years, he is retirement age, still rides (a horse makes a hell of a wheel chair), does shows in multiple states, and yes, is part-time in a wheel chair and part time walking bent over with one or two long canes. But, he’s walking. He has some bad days when pain makes him want to bite heads off, but mostly he does better than 90% of people his age who’ve taken half the beating he has. He would’ve been fully in a wheelchair over a decade ago, if not for the last 4-5 surgeries. That being said, it’s risky. You can only have your spine operated on so many times and not have something go wrong. He’s as hampered as he is now, not because of the spine itself, but because a bad bed transfer by a nurse, not long after surgery #8, busted something lose and he essentially had a stroke, necessitating spinal surgery #9 as an emergency.
Friend #2: scoliosis and 2 spinal surgeries, the second because again, the spine remodels eventually. She died 3 times on the table and right after, the second time. But, she is fully active and nearly fully functional. Her need for a second surgery took her out of a physically demanding LEO-related position. After dying 3 times, she had some minor brain impairment, and decided to turn a leave into a retirement. These days she is as capable physically as she was before that surgery, and in less pain, but of course she has some bad days.
Both these friends are poster kids for “if they say ya gotta, ya gotta, but do it on time rather than waiting for it to be an emergency when all they can do is stabilize permanent damage. You won’t go back to pre-bad-back-normal, but assuming surgical competence, you’ll be much better able to do all those things you want to do, with a little help from science and chemistry.”
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