Spine Stenosis

As I am getting older my back problems are to the point that I need surgery. I have been diagnosed with multi level spinal stenosis. In a nut shell, I have a narrowing of my spinal canal and it is compressing my spine and nerves and joints. After years of being told that I have degenerative discs in my back I now have the added complication of the multi level spinal stenosis which they believe is related to the disc issues.

I have searched on sites like emedicine to see if I can learn anything about my prognosis. The site gave me some good in-site into the possible complications of surgery and the effects that surgery can have on the elderly. There is no real cure for my conditions and at best I can hope for some marked pain relief. The doctor would like to perform some decompressions on different vertebrae in my back. In addition they want to do some spine fusion on my lower back to help keep the discs from pressing on each other.

I have been in pain for so long I do not know what being pain free feels like. Because I have multi level spinal stenosis I may not have the best result from the surgery. If the stenosis was a single spinal stenosis I would have a very good shot at becoming pain free. But because the multilevel spinal stenosis brings with it issues in several areas of my back, I just may not be able to have everything working well after surgery.

The idea of surgery is a bit scary but people have decompressions done all of the time. They will basically remove excess bone and tissue and that will hopefully relieve some of the pressure and nerve pain. Multilevel spinal stenosis is basically stenosis in many areas of the spine. My narrow spinal canal is putting lots of pressure on different areas of my spine. That coupled with the degenerative discs and you have quite the mix of back problems.

I am going to move forward with the surgery because without it I will most likely end up in a wheel chair. At my age the options are not as good just because so much damage has been caused with this multilevel spinal stenosis. Hopefully I will get some relief from the back pain and I will gain some of my mobility back.