[Maria]

You'll be lucky like me and your disc space will autofuse somewhere.. that sure helped my L5S1 pain and I still have L4 disc probs tho low dose daily opioid pain med seems to help greatly and at least I "appear" to be a well functioning 58 y.o. female! In reality I can do a fair amount as long as sitting long periods aren't involved and heavy duty anything. No longer work so that has taken a lot of pressure of me/my spine.

One thing that I've found is walking and being active is imperative to my spinal well being and less pain. I must have way too much arthritis in there because when I was off my feet for a few weeks re my most recent foot surgery (bunionectomy right foot) my back was KILLING ME by the 2nd week. I literally had to force myself to walk once I was given the OK to be on my feet/foot post that surgery. Even a gimp walk was better than no walking.

I used to have burning pain in the areas you mentioned re wrapping around the hips and going down both legs (deep burning pain plus the terrible back pain). That's gone so I think that was really related more to the L5S1 disc for me.

Stay as active as you can and if you've not already tried pain management meds (big guns/strong ones) you may want to try them before surgery altho I do have a 70 y.o. friend that had 2 level fusion about 4 months ago and is doing way better than she was for years prior to the surgery.