Blairbilly-

You have my sympathy. For me, the disc between L4-5 ruptured badly enough that a piece broke off and moved away from the spine a bit. Docs have done CT scans, etc., to ensure the calcifed fragment is indeed an old disc piece, not cancer...

I'm thinking that if you have made it this far without surgery and have function, you may as well skip it. One of the better surgeons with whom I consulted would have done a "bandaid" procedure and removed the fragment to relieve nerve pressure and pain. By the 6 or 8 months after the blow out, the nerve damage was pretty much done and much of the pain had subsided. He said that after 5 years, studies showed that patients who didn't have surgery were doing about as well as those who did. Also, if they "fuse" two vertebrae, forces on the rest of the spine increases, causing a greater risk of a rupture elsewhere.

Anyway, I switched to the lightest gear I could afford and had to stop camping for a few years. Discovering hammocks made a juge difference. 20+ years later, my left leg is still weaker than the right and I have some numbness down into my toes. The good news is I've hiked over 900 miles of AT in the last 10 years, so you do not have to be "done."

See what you can do to lighten your load, work on body mechanics and strengthening, and try to avoid carrying the kids around. Also, figure out what works for YOU for sleeping on the trail. I can highly recommend a Hennessy Hammock.


CM