[Maria]

Sadly if you signed the consent form you were likely convinced rather than coerced into signing re surgeon talking about how the surgery would help and then it didn't and in fact made it worse. The same thing happened to me w/a lumbar spine surgery however I did go into it willingly as I surely signed the consent form for surgery. It failed, flopped and made me far worse than I was before surgery. Like you I pondered suing however truth be told it's very difficult to prove that something was done wrong in spine surgery unless very obvious like leaving 2x2 in there that later got infected or severing something... and re WC (industrial injury) you cannot bring suit against WC at least not in CA.

The fact that your surgeon gave you the surgical report is pretty much showing that he has nothing to hide. Maybe it was not the best surgery for your situation however if you signed a surgical consent you did agree to it. If the screws are in a questionable or dangerous position it would seem that "possibly" someone would consider doing something about that however probably not if you're talking lawsuit re your last surgeon. Threatening a suit will not help you to get other practitioners of healthcare to want to work with you.

What I found to be most helpful after my failed spine surgery was to try to deal with how to get better not wasting energy on wanting to sue the surgeon since it couldn't be done even tho in my mind I went that route initially as well *unless again you have obvious findings re negligence/malpractice etc*

I think you mentioned Pain Management? That sounds like a good move even if you think it's not helping you, stick w/it. Again if you are seeing another doctor/surgeon do not trash your surgeon verbally and state you're trying to sue this person as this does nothing to make any other physician or healthcare provider want to work with you in fact it does the opposite (I worked in healthcare my entire career).

Spine surgery fails often enough. There are no guarentees. We have to be the ones to contemplate seriously any surgical option and get 2nd and 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th (like me) opinions before endeavoring to pursue a spine surgery (the 6 opinions were after my failed 2nd spine surgery when thinking about a 3rd spine surgery which I didn't do even tho all surgeons were in agreement re surgery/type). Another thing is "experimental" spine surgery indicates that it's in an experimental phase so again you had to consider that. Did Worker's Compensation pay for the "experimental" surgery? When I was first considering ADR it was in the trial phase and it was made abundantly clear to me with paperwork what the word trial implied. WC orginally auth'd for me then pulled that authorization for 2 years. WC doesn't usually like to authorize experimental surgery and does not do that lightly so I'm wondering how long you may have been in pursuit of this surgical option or was it a departure from another approved surgery recommended/authorized (then WC probably wouldn't pay for it and stick you with the bill)..

I'm very sorry to read how badly your surgery has turned out however I encourage you to focus your efforts on how you're going to deal with the pain and limitations.

And yes, eventually I filed for permanent disability after my 2nd spine surgery even tho a big part of my reason for getting it of course was to extend my working career not cut it short. Stuff happens unfortunately.