Last November, my mother-in-law had been dealing with back pain and sciatica issues that prompted her to see her doctor. They ordered an MRI, saw a disc herniation, and recommended a microdiscectomy to alleviate her symptoms. She went back and forth on this decision but eventually elected to get the surgery, which was performed in February of this year. Currently, her back pain is much better. However, her nerve pain is the same if not even a little worse than it was in November. She had a meeting with the surgeon who performed the surgery this week, and he said that her nerve pain is due to a complication in the surgery where some type of “fragment” is now pressing on a nerve and causing her symptoms. He claimed this happens in 10% of people who get this surgery. He’s recommending another microdiscectomy to fix the issue.
There were a number of red flags that came up for me when she initially told me about her situation. One, from the material Barbell Medicine has exposed me to, it seems suggesting a microdiscectomy based on an MRI result alone may be foolish considering how often disc abnormalities show up in asymptomatic people. Two, this surgeon is telling her that she shouldn’t even be walking more than a single mile for up to a year after the surgery. I’m certainly not a doctor, but that amount of inactivity seems way too low to me and I wonder if being that sedentary wouldn’t just make her symptoms even worse.
Does she sound like a good candidate for a consultation with someone from the rehab team? Based on this information, do you think she could rehab this problem without having the second surgery?