Surgery for Herniated Discs

In researching surgical options, I learned about several types. It's kinda funny that when you research these options on the net, every page you see is somehow connected to a doctor that performs that surgery. That really bothered me. Here is what I have learned, and my impressions:

If you have a simple herniated disc, you probably don't need surgery, but if you do, there are endless types. Laminectomy, lumbar fusion, open discectomy, endoscopic discectomy, etc etc etc. From what I learned, most of these are from the stone ages,a nd you just don't want them. I ended up with what was supposed to be the all new high tech one: The microendoscopic lumbar discectomy.

This is the one where they basically cut a very small hole, break very little bone, and leave you with a bandaid covering your scar. It is generally outpatient. OK, cool. I go into the hospital, get knocked out, and a few hours later walk out with a band aid and I am all healed? And I can go back to work a few days later! Where do I sign?

My experience was more like this:

I came out of surgery with the band aid. That was true. I did walk out, but that was because I was so determined to WALK out. But the pain was something to behold. I was certainly in no shape to go back to work several days later.... not even several weeks later. Even a few months later, I wasn't feeling up to it. It took months and months of physical therapy before I could even sit again.

I believed that after sugery and some recovery, that I would be as good as new. What I learned was that this is almost never the case. When the doctors tell you they have a 99% success rate, they fail to explain what 'success' means. In my world, if I have an infection, and take an antibiotic that kills the infection, and a few weeks later I am back to normal, the treatment was a success, right?

But what if it worked more like this: You get the infection and it causes you to have a 102 fever. You take the antibiotics, and a few weeks later, your fever is down to 101 degrees. Was that a success? Of course not!

In the world of back surgery, that would be a success! As long as you are AT ALL better several weeks after the surgery than you were the day before the surgery, the procedure gets two thumbs up!

So in the end, I was never really sure what made me better. I mean, had I done months and months of physical therapy, maybe I would have healed anyway? Sadly, I am left with that impression.