Still good

Not much new to report.  Still doing well with gradual improvement.  I've been building up my sitting time while working.  I am sitting on an exercise ball for part of the day while working.  By about 2:00 I start to feel some back fatigue, but I think this is more muscular fatigue as a result of getting used to sitting for longer periods of time and sitting on the ball which takes more energy.  By the end of the day, I am pretty tired.  It's been almost 2 years since I sat upright through an entire day of work.

I have noticed a decrease in my hip pain after I added in a few new stretches into my PT routine.  Currently, I am doing the following:

Rocking my pelvis back and forth sitting on the ball
Rocking pelvis side to side on the ball
Pelvic circles on the ball
Retlouping (google it) to mobilize nerves.
Straight leg hamstring stretches while lying on my back, and pumping my ankle to also mobilize the nerve.
Glute stretches on my back, one leg straight on the floor, pulling the other knee to the same shoulder for a while and then towards the opposite shoulder.
Laying on my stomach propped up on my elbows for a couple minutes.
Flexing core muscles and holding for 10-30 seconds 10 times per day.
Stretching hamstrings by putting my leg up on the 4th stair with my knee locked.
This one sounds a little strange but it works really well:  I take a tennis ball and put it under one of my glutes and roll around on it along the sciatic nerve channel.  It hurts a little but it really helps to break up any adhesions that can form which kind of glue the sciatic nerve to the surrounding tissues.

Once I started doing the stair stretch, and the tennis ball thing, I noticed a decrease in my hip pain in just a couple days.  I think I maybe had some adhesions on the nerves that I was able to break up a bit.  My right hamstring is still tighter than my left one, but it is getting better.

I feel better each week, but am still not doing any strenuous or high impact exercises yet.  I am pretty out of shape and still have a ways to go to get back to a place where I feel fit again.  I just don't want to take any chances.

7 weeks out

I'm now 7 weeks out and still doing pretty well.  I started land based physical therapy this week and the first session was just some gentle stretching, mobilization, and nerve flossing exercises.  Introducing some new movements that I have been avoiding while the bone bonds to the disc, and some of them felt a little strange after not doing them for awhile.  I still have some right hip pain when doing a leg raise that has maybe improved a little bit, but it varies day to day so it is hard to tell. 

I started back to work this week.  I have started to transition to sitting more as I was laying down most of the time I wasn't up doing things or walking.  I have noticed an increase in fatigue this week.  Just being upright for more time and concentrating for work really seems to take it out of me.  Hoping I can start doing some more cardio at PT to help get myself back in shape.  I've also been thinking of buying an elliptical machine so I can do lower impact cardio workouts in my house.

Mr. Boeree got back to me and said that what I was seeing was just due to the X ray not being centered on L5-S1 which caused the far side of the vertebrate to appear in the spot I was concerned about.  He said there was nothing at all to worry about.

Adios compression socks

I am now 6 weeks out from my surgery and doing great so far.  I am happy to be done with the compression socks, although I did get used to them somewhat as the weeks went by.  At the magical 6 week mark, I am now allowed to resume "light aerobic exercises" such as the elliptical machine or stationary bicycling.  I have completed my pool physical therapy and will be starting some land based PT shortly. 

I had a set of xrays this morning and a follow up with my surgeon here in the US, who was very interested to hear about my experience.  He gave me an order for the land based physical therapy at a different location as he liked their program for post disc replacement a bit better.  This will make 4 total different physical therapists I've been to since the start of my "journey."  He was happy with the placement of the disc.  I also asked him for a copy of his CV and a letter stating the average costs of a discectomy and fusion to include in my insurance claim.  Hopefully, they will see that my disc replacement costs were much less than a fusion would have been and cover the costs.  I go back for another follow up and xrays in 6 weeks.

He also asked about what I had been told about possible future facet joint complications and I told him that one of the reasons I went with the M6 was because of the graded resistance that should help prevent facet overloading.  He said that was a good point, as he had only worked with the Charite, Maverick, and ProDisc devices, none of which had graded resistance.  He then showed me a device he had used with some success on patients that had facet issues.  The small device called the Coflex helps unload the facet joints and is a very simple and easy surgery.  This is good to know in the event I develop any facet problems in the future (although I hope the M6 prevents this).

Here is a link with some more info on the Coflex:
http://www.paradigmspine.com/products/interspinous_technology/coflex/indication_specific/en/

Here are my 6 week xrays:

The placement still looks good, although when I looked closely at the side view, it looked to me that I might have a small area of bone growth on the posterior (back) surface of the top endplate.  My surgeon here did not mention it and I didn't see it until I took a closer look at the images once I got home.  I'm not 100% sure of what I'm seeing, but I sent the images to Mr. Boeree and asked him about it, so we will see what he says.

Other than that, things are still going great.  I've been keeping my activities limited to walking and the pool therapy to this point just to be safe.  My hip pain is still present when I do a straight leg raise, although it's very minor and has improved a small amount.  It is really barely worth mentioning, and would not be much of a problem if it never went away.  I go back to work on Monday and since I work from home, this should not be much of a problem.

5 weeks

Not much new to report.  Still doing multiple walks per day and pool therapy twice a week which feels pretty easy for the most part.  Many of the exercises don't seem to feel like they are doing much, but I do feel better than normal the day after.  Doing bicycle kicks in the corner of the pool is nice since it is the one thing I feel safe to try to get my heart rate up a little.  The pain I had in my abs after the first session did not come back after subsequent pool sessions.  The pain in my hip is a little better and seems to depend on activity level.  A couple ibuprofen seem to knock it down pretty well when needed.  I have xrays and a follow up appt. with my surgeon here in the USA next week.  Still being careful with my movements, but slowly incorporating small increases to my range of motion, maybe a quarter twist or bend would be the very max I would do at this point.  No new significant adverse events which means so far so good.

4 weeks

Not much new to report.  I think I'm still doing pretty well at this activity level.  I still have some pain in my right hip but only when I do a straight leg raise, which is pretty easy to avoid in everyday life so it is not much more than an annoyance.  I am still doing the nerve flossing stretches in case it is scar tissue causing the hip pain.  These stretches aim to keep the sciatic nerve moving along in its channel to avoid/break up scar tissue from adhering to the nerve and causing pain.  It could also just be residual swelling/irritation from the surgery.  I had something similar after my first discectomy surgery earlier this year and it eventually went away (before the reherniation).  I've also been keeping up with my walking regiment, but a day or two a week I'll skip the longer walk to give myself a rest day.  I still get pretty tired easily, especially after a longer walk or in the afternoons and I have some pain in my abs when I do anything to utilize them.  I'm also still wearing the DVT socks, but I think I've gotten used to them and they don't itch as much anymore, but I'm still looking forward to them going away in 2 more weeks.

Tonight I went out with some friends for one of their birthdays and sat for a few hours total with a couple of short breaks just to stand up for a few seconds and then we went to a concert and stood for a couple hours as well.  I did not feel any additional pain from this, but I still plan to be careful and treat nights like this as special occasions and not push it.  It was the most sitting and standing I've done continuously without a break to lay down since well before my surgery.

Another odd fun fact is that I hadn't sneezed since the week after my surgery until tonight.  Right after the surgery, when I sneezed, I could definitely feel something hard/strange in my back which I can only assume was the vertebrate rattling a bit against the disc.  It didn't really hurt that much, but it was an unsettling/foreign feeling.  I have a little trick to short circuit my sneezes so I had been using it for the past couple weeks.  Well, tonight one finally snuck out and I did not have any strange feeling at all.  It felt completely normal.  I'm not sure this is any kind of clinical benchmark, but I'm treating it as one for myself.