[dshobbies]

I just wanted to add my two cents into this pot. After rupturing my disc back in 1994, I was in so much pain and disability, I would have done anything to fix it immediately... and did. And this surgery, a disco and lami, worked for 8 years, until the pressure on the adjacent L4/5 became too much and I had a second surgery. Less than 1 year later, I was in trouble with L3/4.

Looking at the statitistics, there seems to be an 80% success rate with first surgeries, which drops to 50% for a second and then all the way down to 5%. I know a woman who has had 11 surgeries and is now in the fusion stages.

In '94, an adr wasn't really an option for me. It was in 2002 but I had never heard about it and was never told about it.

Now the point, these surgeries caused further DDD on adjacent discs. The scar tissue made the chances for my ADR surgery less successful. If an ADR was available (to me) in 1994, that might be the end of my story. Would I have gone for such a drastic procedure when something far less invasive was available to me? I don't know. But as long as you're lucid, you should have all this available information to help you make an that 'informed' decision.

Could you be entirely successful with a lami... sure. Will you? Who knows. Will an ADR solve your pain more permanantly? Again, an unknown. You should just know that the decisions you make today can impact the decisions you might have to make tomorrow.

I do wish you every luck and a pain free 2007.

Dale