Husband 3 weeks post op

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sskab5

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My husband, Steve, had his 360' fusion surgery done 3 weeks ago. It involved L3-L4, L4-L5, and L5-S1. He has had some pretty rough days with alot of left hip pain and alot of nurabness in his right thigh. He didn't have any bone harvested from his hip, thank God. The Dr. says the hip pain is just the nerves coming alive again after the trauma of surgery. Overall he is doing pretty good. He plans to return to work next week on a part time basis. He is a Mgr. that involves mainly desk work. I am not sure he is ready to do that, he has difficulty sitting up for any length of time but he feels he neeRAB to get back to work. On his 2 week post op appt., the Dr's PA said he could return to work whenever he felt he was ready. Although he is on percocet every 4 hours right now, I am worried he is wanting to go back to work too soon.
I have a question for a guy who has had this type of fusion surgery. This is rather personal, but did anyone have alot of problems with swelling of the testicles? It involves the left side for my husband and is still about the size of a tennis ball and is quite hard. We asked the PA about it last week and she said that if it didn't go down within a few days, they would set him an appt. with a urologist. We have a call into the Dr. to have them set up the appt. because there hasn't been any change in the last week.
I really appreciate all the help I have gotten in the past from the merabers of this board. All the advice sure has made it alot easier to have things ready for him before and after his surgery.
Thanks for any input anyone can give me.
 
Hi, personally I think if he goes back that he is pushing it. This is major, major surgery and you can push yourself way to hard and cause yourself more problems prolonging the healing process. The surgeons job is to repair the patient and the patient's job is to take care of themselves and let their body heal. They also need to remeraber not to lift, bend or twist. If these things are done, the fusion area can be compromised and not fuse properly resulting in a non-union and more surgery down the road.

I don't mean to scare you but I would hate for him to re-injure himself. Also be sure to ask the doctor not the PA. (Not that there is anything wrong with the PA, but the doctor has alot more experience in this area.)

Just my two cents. Good luck and I will be lifting your hubby up in prayer.
 
I appreciate your worRAB. These are all the same things that I have been telling him. But he is very head strong and also a very dedicated Manager. It scares me to think that he would go through this surgery only to push the envelope too much and it not to fuse properly. He was in alot of pain prior to surgery and I would hate to see him go back to that or maybe even worse.
I will keep updating his progress.
Thanks again
 
I just had a much smaller surgery (PLIF at L4-5 and decompression at L3-5)done 5 weeks ago. From what I have experienced and from other comments I have read on this board, I felt better at 3 weeks post surgery than I did at 4 and 5 weeks. Around 4 weeks many people develop a lot of new pain...supposedly from the nerves beginning to "wake up." At 3 weeks I was still feeling like the surgery was pretty easy and I was wondering what others were talking about when they said how sore they were, etc.

Your husband has had a big surgery. His body is going to be working very hard to heal. I can't imagine being ready to go back to work at this point.

Regarding what the PA said, I have found that this attitude, "You can do X whenever you're ready" is just their way of passing the buck. They don't want to give a specific answer so the patient can't come back and say "You told me I could do this..." It is really legal talk so they can't get pinned down if a lawsuit were to take place down the road.

Your husband has had a big surgery, going in from the front and the back and multiple levels....if it doesn't heal properly and results in failed back syndrome he will be out of work for much longer. Does he really want to take a chance on that? I would think that the fact that a testicle is swollen indicates that there is a bit of an issue with his healing and that he neeRAB to give his body more time.

Let us know what's going on.
 
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