Over a year of pain and wondering.
I’ll try to compress this as much as I can! Today, I (38F) got news from my surgeon that was completely unexpected, as I have a grade 3 pars defect on L4. As of right now, I’m only showing trace spondylolisthesis.
Almost exactly a year ago, I was training with heavy weight for an expedition on Mt. Rainier. While on the mountain, something went horribly wrong and I fought through the worst pain of my life to get back down. MRI showed bilateral herniation at L4-L5. Since then, I have been in PT consistently, had multiple epidurals and medial branch blocks, and in January of this year I had a lumbar decompression with laminectomy and partial facetectomy. While I have finally gotten rid of the awful nerve pain, since my surgery I have had excruciating low back pain and am dependent on narcotics and muscle relaxers to manage the bare minimum of working and then laying in bed. Had another MRI which shows that my disc did reherniate and was sent to a new surgeon to be considered for disc replacement, new surgeon wanted a SPECT/CT, and found the above.
Obviously I’m no longer a candidate for disc replacement, but he absolutely does not want to do a fusion. I was functioning at an extremely high athletic level prior to this- I’m a rock climber, mountaineer, hiker, trail runner… this past year has been awful. I am barely able to do anything and I can’t stand it.
He is recommending a direct repair of the pars defect, robotically assisted and minimally invasive. Since my disc healed the prior herniation just fine, he doesn’t think the reherniation will be an issue and I agree. Just wondering if anyone has had a direct repair recently and how it went, what to expect, etc. I’m also seeing if anyone else was at my prior activity level before this? I’m having a hard time finding experiences from other highly athletic adults with this issue and how things have gone for them.