After years of back pain scans and even one surgery Nicole Castro accepted pain as part
of her life i would have back spasms at times that would take me to my knees that's how bad and how
strong the back spasms were so it mean the back pain was very limiting at times and nobody really
gave me any answers so i had really just succumbed to the idea that this was really just gonna be
what my back was gonna be she tried yoga physical therapy medication you name it i was sleeping in
the recliner couldn't sleep in the bed um limited my activities you know limited what i could do
with the grandkids it just got progressively worse then neurosurgeon dr john weaver took away her
pain in a roundabout way she was connected with him for carpal tunnel surgery but after he looked
at her scans he found something in her spine that had been missed by previous providers more
precisely he found something missing in her spine the way he explained it was like it's kind of like
the ship is your main spine and then you have the chain and then you have the anchor which is your
disc so i'm missing the chain basically holding the disc so he said the disc is basically just
like floating out to sea so what was happening was the disc was pressing into my spinal cord and then
it was also causing the other ones to slide also it was bone on bone i really didn't have any space
it was compressing both nerves going down my legs i had back spasms pretty much daily
and it's been this way for years it just got progressively worse over time dr weaver's solution
a minimally invasive surgery he said he was going to go in through my side they were going to take
some marrow out of my hip area and put it in between my discs and create like a spacer almost
and then the marrow was gonna he they were gonna use my marrow to fuse naturally they used the
plate and the screws into the discs and used that to stabilize it and put the spacer and that's what
opened up my discs and then kept them in place and aligned them and if you look at the x-rays now
they're perfectly lined there's the space between the discs and
it looks completely different i only have an incision on the side and two small incisions
on my back that's it and everything healed up beautifully i mean it's crazy because he
actually i have a tattoo where he went in on my back and he didn't even mess up the tattoo
like the tattoo is still perfect i had a back brace that i had to wear for i believe it was
like eight weeks and i wore the back brace when i was up and around um but i was mobile pretty much
immediately i was able to get up and walk right after surgery within months she was completely
recovered and off all medications including ones she needed pre-surgery i am completely pain-free
spasm-free i mean it's amazing but i never imagined that i would be completely
pain-free and muscle spasm-free and best of all she's back to focusing on what she loves most
you know i can take them out i can chase them down i can run with them i can lift them
all that stuff and i'm not limited like there's just no limitations anymore if you
find the right surgeon and the right procedure it can help i mean i'm like a testament to it
we just heard nicole talk about the importance of finding the right doctor we are now joined by
that right doctor for her neurosurgeon dr john weaver dr weaver thank you for joining us today
thank you for the invitation to be here hey you know nicole told us how she met you but from
your history and how you remember it how did you connect with her as a patient she discussed
the fact that she had had a long history of low back pain that dating back to 2000 2001
aggravated by her working as a nurse and all physical activities seemed to make it worse
she had carpal tunnel syndrome and we reviewed that and discussed
surgery for the carpal tunnel but we started looking at her images as well
as regards to her low back and how that might have caused her symptoms that she just also described
and when you looked at that imaging what did you find then well she had a significant misalignment
of two bones the lower lumbar spine number l4 and l5 and l4 had a congenital abnormality a
relatively common one an absence of a portion of the bone that allows an instability to occur
we chose her surgery so that it could be the most minimally invasive procedure
and i think one of the most successful procedures we have opportunities to enter the spine directly
from the front which is anterior directly lateral which is a lateral approach at an angle which is
an op-like approach or from the back a posterior approach which most of us think about when we
think what's back surgery an incision on your back in this case her incision was
low and on her left side so we provided an oblique approach to the anterior part of the spine and in
that surgery we empty the disc space out put an angled spacer in that space to jack up the disc
space and give her more normal spinal curvature and then in the second procedure at the same
operation made two small incisions on her back and placed percutaneous screws in other words without
direct observation of the bones we're replacing the screws watching on our fluoroscopic imaging
we place screws into the two adjacent bones pull them back into normal alignment and lock them in
position the best step for most patients that have pain in their back in their buttock in their legs
or even in their arms and necks as regards to cervical spine is to reach out to their
primary care providers because most pains that occur will be treated well without surgery and
modalities of heat and ice anti-inflammatory medications medications that help reduce
nerve irritability called anti-neuralgics yoga acupuncture physical therapy and even chiropractic
management often cure the pains that most of us experience and most of us will have neck and back
pain during our lifetime it's not it's a common experience surgery uh you don't avail yourself of
surgery until you have managed these things with non-surgical care all right dr john weaver good
to know there are so many options for treating this type of pain thank you for your time today