January 21, 2008 by dbarker.

Well, I’ve been working from home for the last two weeks. It’s been pretty rough. Not that my job is that physical, but you try sitting up all day with back muscles that have been traumatized by spinal surgery. It’s not easy.

It will be five weeks since the surgery tomorrow, and I told work that I’d be out for at least six. Customers are looking to get me back onsite. I’m not sure I’m ready as I can’t lift anything, and I tire out about 4 o’clock and I haven’t been starting until 9am.

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January 4, 2008 by dbarker.

I got the staples and stitches out today, it was a little late because the skin had started to grow over the stiches and staples. There is a small hole about the size of a dime where the skin hasn’t grown together. I have to watch this for a while until it scars over.

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January 1, 2008 by dbarker.

Although, I had previously said that I didn’t ever want to have back surgery again, I had a rather extensive one on my back on the 18th of December 2007.

There were two procedures involved, the first was called a posterior lumbar interbody fusion with instrumentation. They fused the L5-S1 and the L4-L5 together, and fixed the spine in place with screws and titanium rods and plates. They cut the back part of my spine away in a procedure called a laminectomy. The laminectomy is basically where they cut the back part of your spine out, exposing the spinal nerves underneath. They removed all the disc material from my degenerated spinal discs and replaced it with the bone from the laminectomy as the fusion material in addition they used OP-1 Putty from Stryker. OP-1 putty is recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein-7 (rhBMP-7), formulated with a purified Type I collagen carrier. Once implanted in the body, OP-1 stimulates natural bone healing by actively recruiting stem cells from the surrounding tissue and blood supply, initiating the bone formation cascade. The combination of the interbody fusion cage and fusion material should promote a successful fusion.

In addition, they performed a Sacral laminectomy. From that opening they removed the tumor that has grown in that space. According to the surgeon, he was able to remove all the tumor that he could see. Hopefully they got enough of it so that I will never have to worry about it again.

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