Drawing the line, continue covering it up or get it fixed?

Nagginwitch:
By the selection of your user name I gather that your pain level is not a kind reflection on your emotional self = Naggin' Witch.

I see that no one has offered to venture a suggestion to your plight. My guess is that the lack of response is not that anyone does not care but that the answer you seek is beyond the realm of being answered.

You ask if your cervical and lumbar pain should be "fixed" (i.e. surgery) or managed as is with the current treatment options (i.e. maintain the status quo).

Unfortunately, your question is not as neatly compartmentalized as you have so nicely defined it.

Surgery is not necessarily a fix. Every surgery has its own inherent risks. Not every lumbar and cervical pain can be alleviated by surgery. Every surgery has the potential to make one situation worse and one's pain worse (ex. failure of bone site to fuse; failure to adequately relieve compressed nerve roots; reflex sympathetic dystrophy).

Too, there are good surgeons and MDs and less than good surgeons and MDs. Not every surgeon nor every MD is equally skilled and qualified.

I always am of the option to use all availing non-surgical options before even considering a surgical option.

Certainly, employ gentle exercise and movement (yoga, walking, swimming, pilates) to make sure that an underlying depression is not contributing to your pain experience. People in pain are often afraid to move, fearful that movement will make worsen their pain. Most clinical studies show that general mobilization will ease pain by easing soft tissue pain attributed to prolonged sitting and static postures.

Bottom Line: I do not think that anyone can adequately answer your question. You are going to find a mix of people who fared fairly well with surgery and those who were negatively affected by surgery.
And you are going to find people who made gains with conservative treatment and those for whom conservative treatment was nothing but a placebo or aspirin.

I do offer the following viewpoint as a pearl of wisdom. . .

Do not entertain surgery unless you have a clearly defined neurological deficit (ex. focal nerve root entrapment with definitive numbness of a dermatome or specific motor weakness or spasticity). Having surgery to correct non-specific "back pain" will have a higher rate of failure than surgery to correct for an identified and specific deficit.

Hi Naggin & welcome to Healing Well. I really like your username, good sense of humor. Sorry to read what you are dealing with.

Do your homework before deciding to do the trial for the SCS unit. Unfortunately, if you look in our older threads here on SCS units you will see more failures than success. The reasons because of failure vary. The few that did post a positive thread were usually ones that had the BS model. If you care to read about the units here you can use our search feature at the top. We do ask that you not post on those old threads because there is a good chance the member is no longer active here.

Take care.