[steve55]

Met with Dr B and Dr Sullivan here in Wisconsin today. Apparently my disc subsided deeper into my vertebrea such that I may not have enough bone left to do a fusion with. I guess that when the disc sinks, it eats up the bone and it must just disentegrate? They may end up doing a corpectemy (removal of C5/6 & C6/7 ADR's and removal of the vertebrae). This is not quite as drastic as removing all 3 discs and two vertebraes as the dallas doctor suggested, but its still not good if that ends up being the case. Dr Sullivan said he would suggest doing the corpectemy but Dr B says that after reviewing all the films, he thinks I have just enough vertebrae left for him to be able to salvage this via fusion and save the C5/6 ADR. Dr B says that normally they dont take bone from the patient hip, they normally use donor bone. But in my case, I need the sturdiest tightest fusion possible since the vertebrae is already so compromised, so they will take bone from my hip instead. I told him I heard that the donor site pain can be worse than the fusion pain, but he says that's usally with lumbar cases due to taking much larger graphs. But with cervical, they dont need much and he will cut from the top center of the hip and not from the edges as most docs would do. This supposedly makes it much easier pain wise. He doesnt expect Ill have much of a problem with pain at the donor site (hip). I guess Ill see soon enough. Again, it may be they end up doing the corpectemy. It all depends on what they see once they have me open.

Im actually more worried about this surgery than I ever was about the 3 level ADR in germany. I have a feeling this one will really be a tough experience. Im hoping Im wrong, but Im really not looking forward to it at all. : ( Surgery is tommorrow at noon.