Laminectomy & Microdiscectomy - My surgery day experience
This was my experience on surgery day. It was a very long day that involved an early morning and almost 12 hours at the hospital. The day was incredibly successful and I was able to go home the same day.
While this wasn’t my first surgery or time under general anesthesia, it was my first “major” surgery where I really had only 1 egg left for options and had to put it in the surgery basket. I was nervous leading up to it wondering if it would work, how much pain I’d be in, can they even fix me, will my body allow me to finally heal? I went down so many Youtube rabbit holes on successful surgeries, unsuccessful surgeries, recovery stories, etc. This really is what motivated me to start this blog in the first place! If you’re also in this position, I’d recommend, timebox your rabbit holes. You can get into some really dark spaces on the internet on here and know every recovery is different and you have a lot more power to control your outcome than you think! I had a coworker tell me when I was sharing my nerves to her, “get off the internet. Do you trust your doctor? (I did) then stop reading and just trust him.” It was terrifying but I needed to hear it.
Note: this is all my experience with surgery in the United States. I’ve learned the prep, the surgery, the hospital stay, and post op can vary drastically and no one way is better than the other (or at least I have no authority to say, I’m sure doctors choose their methods based on what they know and what the hospital has to offer). Listen to YOUR doctors and nurses and just take this as one experience of many.
Week leading up
Leading up to surgery you have to stop a lot of medications and vitamins. Most NSAIDs do have to be stopped so if you rely heavily on them, talk to your doctor and they can hopefully prescribe an alternative. Thankfully, I was already prescribed this so I didn’t have to change much the week leading up. I had to stop my multi vitamin because it had vitamin E and taking fish oil. I was very cautious on the instructions and also switched body lotion because my lotion had vitamin E. I have no idea if it’s neccessary but I was incredibly nervous and didn’t want to risk it.
I asked my doctor if there were any exercises I should do to prepare and he honestly just said rest and stay comfortable. He said he sees some people recommend strengthening their core but I was in such bad shape that doing that my injure me further.
The last thing I was conscious of was drinking a lot of pre and probiotic beverages. All the anesthesia and pain medication from surgery makes you very constipated and I was hoping it would help - I really don’t think it did anything.
Night Before
The night before surgery I had to wash my body with this special soap. This was the 2nd worse part (stay tuned). I had to wash my body and let it stand on my back for 3-5 minutes. I could barely stand for a minute at that point and those few minutes were so incredibly painful. I slept in clean sheets and clean clothes that night.
Morning of
Morning of the surgery I couldn’t eat or drink anything so I couldn’t take any pain medication. This morning was the most painful part of the whole experience. I had to start by taking that shower again with the soap, and drink a pre surgery beverage they gave me to take. We were up at 4:00am to leave to go to the hospital at 4:30am. I live about 35minutes away from the hospital and the weather was awful so we gave ourselves some buffer time. When in the car, I’d always ride with the seat fully reclined and this morning I brought an ice pack along with me to help ease the pain a bit.
Getting to the hospital
I got to the hospital and had to walk a pretty long distance to the surgery area. Everyone was very nice in letting me take breaks and go at my own pace. This was the most painful part so I’d just recommend let the nurses know and they can try to move quickly for you or work at your pace. It was pretty busy so they had to juggle a lot of things at once, but I felt so grateful for their compassion throughout! For women, note you will have to pee in a cup once you get to the hospital so don’t rush to the bathroom like I did and then have to try and pee again… It was required for all women to take a pregnancy test prior to surgery to ensure I wasn’t pregnant.
There’s a lot of things they have to check with you and go over with you so I really felt like the 2 hour window before surgery went by so fast. I was super grateful Jon could be in there with me in the morning since I was so nervous. Finally it was time and I was wheeled back into the surgery area. All I remember was confirming my info and my surgery, meeting all the nurses and saying hi to my doctor and that was it!
Waking up
I went into surgery around 7:30am and woke up around noon. My surgeon called Jon and told him it was successful and once he was in there he was able to see I was in so much pain because there was a lot of hard disc material pushing onto my nerve. I woke up in the recovery room with a little pain I don’t even remember and all I remember was asking the nurse if I could nap more. Honestly everything was a blur but I don’t remember being in much pain. There was definitely no nerve or leg pain and all the little aches were coming form the incision. Eventually I ate, and then just waited for OT and PT to get there.
I was glad I had my surgery so early because if not, I might have had to stay the night. Before you leave, you have to get an ok from the Occupational Therapist and Physical Therapist and their tests probably take about 30-45 min and I wasn’t able to see them until 3:30pm. When they come, they teach you how to do everything you need to minimize back bending, lifting or twisting like getting in and out of bed, sitting, going to the bathroom, putting on clothes and walking! The walking was honestly my favorite walk. I walked for about 5 minutes with zero pain - yes, I was still coming off all the pain meds from the surgery, but still! It was amazing! This was the first time I had walked that long in months without any pain. I have stairs in my home so I asked if I could also do a stair test as well. This isn’t something they normally do so if you’re in this position this is something hopefully you can ask for.
Going Home
After all my tests, I was able to go home! I went home with a cool ice machine that I still use regularly, some drink packets that I had to take daily, and bandages and gauze for my wound care. My next follow up was 2 weeks after my surgery and I was told zero bending, lifting and twisting for the first two weeks, no lifting anything over 5lbs, to do 3, 10 minute walks a day, and no more than 20 minutes of sitting at a time. After that, I was reclined back in the car and headed home :)
