Hybrid artificial disc replacement and fusion c4-6

Hello & welcome to the forum. I am thinking you are the first one I have seen that has done an artificial cervical disc & to be honest i was not aware of this being done in the cervical area. A friend of mine had a lumbar done & has regretted it since. The surgeon that did her surgery pioneered the lumbar artificial disc so there was plenty of knowledge & experience as far as her surgeon went.

I think a return to work even in August is a little soon. What kind of work do you do? I see more people out a good 6 months in order to completely heal both inside & out. What may appear to be healed on the outside does not necessarily mean the same for the inside. Drs unfortunately, talk text book when it comes to telling a patient when they may return to work, if they told them 6 months to a year for these spine surgeries the patient would not ever agree to surgery. You are right everyone does heal different.

The one thing I will tell you is do not rush back to work & do not let the dr rush you back to work. Your post op care is every bit as important as the surgery itself. Where we see people have problems is when they jump out & do too much too soon & then they are knocked backwards. It takes a lot more to make a come back too. Trust your own judgment.

Take care.

I definitely have to agree with what has been said. I know for my fusion and laminectomy that it took over a year to fully recover and there are still days when I wonder if I did too much too soon. I know we all want to get right back to what we were doing before surgery but we have to be patient and let our bodies heal inside and out. I do hope that you will be able to return to work soon but please don't rush things. You will definitely do a two steps forward and three steps back sort of thing. Good luck with everything.

I am not sure what is meant by hybrid. A friend of mine just had the artificial disk surgery in her neck. All I know is she was up and out of the hospital the next day. I can find out if it was a hybrid.

I'm also not sure what hybrid means but the being up and about after 6 hours, then go home after one night in the hospital is quite typical. My niece I referred to was walking down the hall 2 hours post op. I had a more involved posterior surgery and walked the first day, went home the next day.

Now you are having shortness of breath? Has your dr been informed of that?

Hi afreshstart and Welcome to Healing Well Chronic Pain Forum,  and Welcome to the ACDF club! LOL  Doctors often tell patients how they can go back to work really soon after surgery, but they are not the ones that were cut on, and are not the ones dealing with the post op affects of their surgery!   As you have been previously told, listen to your body and take things easy, it will pay off big time later on! You just have to let your body heal, the artificial disc is one thing and who knows how long that healing process is??? But since you also had a ACDF with donor graft, that does take some time to heal, and for the fusion to take!  With the two together, that just compounds things and I would think make the healing process even longer???

As for the breathing and swallowing difficulties, I think I would talk with your doctor about it, but I can tell you that these are pretty common side affects with this type of surgery, especially the swallowing problems. When they go through the front of your neck like that to do the surgery, they have to pull every thing out of the way to get at the spine, that means stretching nerves that go to the throart and larynx and all those areas. When I had my first ACDF at C6/7 I could hardly swallow, anything, and choked allot, and I even lost my voice for about three months. Still have some residual affect from that surgery as my vocal cords on my right side are still partially paralyzed.  If you read allot of the post of people here that have had ACDF surgery, I think you will find that the swallowing problem is a pretty common side affect.  But for most it does get better and goes away with time!

Anyway my advice to you right now is just be gentle with yourself, and take things easy and don't over due anything or cause any strain or stress on your cervical spine! Give your body time to heal and mend! And of course come here and let us all know how you are doing! When your here at this forum, you are part of our CP forum family!  It is a great place to come for support, and also to vent, your frustrations, as we have all done that at one time or another here!

Again I Welcome YOU!

White Beard

Hello Afreshstart,

You would not believe how excited I was to see your post :)

We have had similar surgeries. My surgery was on June 11 this year and I was supposed to get a two level ADR in C6-7 and C7-T1. After my neurosurgeon did the ADR in C6-7 he found I did not have enough disc space in C7-T1 and put in a spacer fusion.

My recovery so far has been fairly good, first 3-5 days were pretty tough pain wise but I am now almost 5 weeks post-op. I plan to go back to work next week on July 20/15. Not sure if I am ready but my doc told me to try if I want and if it is too much he will let me have more time off. I have a medical administrative job so not very physical thank goodness, plus I want to go back to work if I can. I am finding my biggest issue right now is afternoon pain, I think I do too much in the morning and end up sore in afternoon and have to take more tramacet and lay down. I am 47 so a little older then you, I am fit and walk 4-5km a day and have been since day 7.

I have been looking all over the internet for others who have had this hybrid procedure and have not been able to find any one or much information on it. Keep me posted on how you are doing!

Nodales4

Post Edited (Nodales4) : 7/15/2015 12:41:58 AM (GMT-6)

Welcome Nodales4,

There is something wrong here. I think this thread was actually started a year ago on this same date-not sure why it shows today's date. I know my comments were NOT made today.

Read what Vernita says in her thread titled Ready for surgery. Her situation may relate some to what you have. There are many others of us who have also had fusion surgery. In the Chronic Pain 101 near the very top of threads, there is lots of information written for and by fusion people. Hope some of that will be helpful to you.

Be kind to yourself and don't push too much to allow the fusion to happen!

It might be helpful if you would start your own thread about hybrid fusions. If the person who started this thread is still active perhaps she will respond.

Ladies, I am having huge problems getting into the forum. I was not able to get in yesterday & post at all. If I was able to get in, I could not post.

I hope our new member here will make an intro post as I am sure she/he does not want to highjack Afreshstarts thread.

Hi Paulh & welcome to Healing Well. Paul you have brought up an old thread. If you would please start your own thread here. To make your own post, click Post New Topic, type in a heading & then start typing your post. People tend to not read these older threads & you will get better responses by making a new thread.

Thanks