Final Appointment with Dr. Hu

Monday October 27th Sandi and I met with Dr. Hu and he gave us the final update as to the procedure for the spinal fusion operation on November 24th. I am extremely anxious to get this operation over with but still a little apprehensive. He reassured us that he has had a lot of success with this procedure and he expects I will recover better than ever. I followed the Dr Hu meeting with an appointment with his physiotherapist Marco Lebrasseur who gave me a set of stretching exercises to do prior to the operation. I will be working with him starting 3-4 weeks after the operation. I also completed all the pre-operation stuff, blood work, chest xray, etc and I am wearing the yellow identification band so no turning back now. Sandi and I are going to Palm Desert on November 4th for two weeks, may as well get a couple of weeks of sun before, as it will be quite some time before we can go back.

How did we get to this point.

For those of you who have suffered from a bad back or know someone with a bad back you know that you will try anything to make it better. I was the same. I tried physio, chiropractor, spinal decompression all of which proved to be a total waste of money. The pain and the effect on the quality of life, not being able to do the simplist of things such as walking and the fact that things were getting progressively worse led to my decision to pursue surgery.Thanks to my good friend and personal physician (Bob Harper) who was instrumental in getting me an appointment with a top Spinal Surgeon (Dr. Richard Hu) I made the decision to proceed with surgery. Dr. Hu will be performing a spinal fusion using spacers for fusion between the L4/L5 vertebra and a rod system to stabilize the spine(see attached picture). The operation is scheduled for Monday November 24th and takes approximately 4 hours. I will be in hospital 4 to 5 days.