>> I was doing laundry one day and I bent over to pick
up a shirt, and that's how it all started.
>> What started for Lisa was months of debilitating back pain.
Simple activities she enjoyed became monumental painful ordeals that she had to give up.
>> So, we take pride in our farm, and you know, keep it looking very nice,
and I wasn't able to do flower gardens, I wasn't able to trim weeds back,
I wasn't even able to pull weeds.
Just the thing that I enjoyed, I ended up on the couch all day long
because I couldn't get anything done outside without extreme pain.
It gets to the point where you think, I just can't live like this anymore.
How am I going to -- how am I going to survive daily if all I can do is go
to work, come home, and lay on the couch?
>> After two years of trying medications, Chiropracty, and physical therapy
without any relief, Lisa was referred
to Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. Seth Williams, at UWA Health in Madison.
>> She was really struggling and I could tell she needed help.
>> When meeting him, I just felt so comfortable with him,
because he was actually listening to me.
>> And I could tell she wasn't able to do anything anymore, she basically just was --
had shut down all of her activities.
And I recognized that, and was able to talk to her about options to get her back
to where she was before, or at least very close to it.
>> Dr. Williams offered a procedure called Anterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion, or ALIF.
It's a minimally invasive spinal fusion.
>> What appealed to me was that I didn't have a 12 inch incision in my back.
I have a neighbor who had a spinal fusion 13 years ago,
and then unfortunately, that's what happened with her.
>> Instead of a large incision in the lower back,
in the ALIF procedure a small incision is made in the front
about three to six inches in length.
Dr. Williams works with Dr. Jon Matsumura, a Vascular Surgeon.
Dr. Matsumura moves blood vessels to the side, allowing Dr. Williams to access the spine.
>> Dr. Matsumura role is to get me safely to the spine, and then get me safely away
from the spine once I'm done with the spinal fusion operation.
We don't cut through any muscles, we're able to work through natural tissue planes
and reach the spine with a minimal amount of disruptiveness to the person's normal anatomy.
And the fusion operation entails removing all or the majority
of the disks at the level to be fused.
And then we place a titanium cage and some bone raft into that space, and then when I'm done
with that, Dr. Matsumura closes the wound.
>> Dr. Williams also makes two small inch long incisions in the back.
He uses screws and rods to stabilize the spine.
>> It is not very destructive to the muscles, we just push them aside,
and we are able to place these screws through small incisions.
And sometimes we even use CT Navigation, which is very advanced.
It just allows me to be very precise with exactly where the screws are placed.
>> After the surgery, Lisa immediately felt better.
>> I woke up from the surgery and the only pain I had was
from the incisions, and that wasn't bad at all.
>> By the third week after her surgery, Lisa was walking up to five miles a day.
Within a few months, she was cleared for almost all other activities.
>> When I saw Lisa walk in, and when I see a lot of other people like her walk in the clinic
at that first post-operative visit, it looks like nothing has happened.
And, don't get me wrong, that's not true for everybody,
but it often looks like nothing has happened.
>> The surgery was such a life saver, I wish I hadn't have waited so long.
It's very gratifying that I can see now that I can get down on my hands and knees
and pick things up off the floor.
And I can empty the dishwasher, and I can carry the laundry, I can do so many more things.
I feel like going out with my friends now,
I can't dance up a storm yet, you know, but that's coming.