Back Surgery

An update on the home front...

Scott had back surgery last Monday, February 28. He has been dealing with congenital spinal stenosis for almost 20 years. To put off bone-removing surgery, he had an X-Stop implant five years ago. We chose that option because we hoped to postpone such radical surgery until the medical field had made dramatic and less-invasive methods for treating the condition. However, it became apparent, especially in October, that things were not going well because Scott's feet were falling asleep and not waking up. In addition, he could only walk thirty steps before he had to stoop down, bend over and relieve the pressure in his back.

So we found ourselves at the University of Utah hospital on Monday for a procedure called laminectomy. In Scott's case, this involved four levels in his back - L2 through L5. The two-hour surgery turned into a 4 1/2-hour surgery, but everything went well. Scott came home to Logan on Wednesday.

The doctors said the best physical therapy would be to walk as much as possible. As of yesterday, even with pain from the surgery, Scott walked a little over four miles. If his improvement trends to the positive as much as it has so far, we plan to be back in Torrey working on straw bale walls in June. Hooray for modern medicine!