First question and the most important one is this.
Have you seen a spine specialist and been evaluated and diagnosed or have you just received an MRI reading report that was done by a radiologist and given to you by your primary doctor?
If you have not seen a spine specialist then you need to see one, either an orthopedic surgeon that specializes in spines or a neurosurgeon that specializes in spines only.
As for your MRI results and what you have posted. It doesn't make any sense.
you posted e discal hernias.
Do you mean 3 disc herniations?
If you have 3 disc herniations you have only accounted for 2 of them. L4/L5 is one level and L5/S1 is one level.
that accounts for 2 disc herniations, where is the third one located?
What kind of doctor told you that surgery may not help you? It sounds like this doctor is not a spine surgeon and really doesn't know what he is talking about.
If, per chance, this doctor is a spine surgeon, then run for your life away from this doctor and find another spine surgeon to see.
I'm not a doctor, so please remember that my suggestions are only from experience as a spine patient, a spine patient who once said "no way in h%ll is anyone putting a knife in my spine", and a spine patient who went and got more than 6 other opinions from various top rate spine surgeons before returning to my original spine surgeon for surgery.
I'm a spine patient that has been in similar shoes as you and sure knows how painful physical therapy can be and not really able to do it.
So here are my thoughts.
You need to see a spine surgeon for evaluation and diagnosis.
I would suggest from personal experience an orthopedic surgeon that specializes in spines, if possible a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon that specializes in spines would be even better.
Let the spine surgeon evaluate and diagnose your spine problem. Also remember that an MRI is just a bunch of fancy pictures that show all kinds of things and just because there are 2 or 3 disc herniations doesn't mean they are all causing your pain.
Many people walk around with disc bulges, herniations and never have any symptoms and wouldn't know they existed unless they had an MRI done and it showed them.
Also remember that your MRI reading report was done by a radiologist and it is his/her interpretation of the pictures that you are reading. That doesn't mean they are correct or accurate, and it also doesn't mean that they are causing all of your pain.
It is only an interpretation of what the pictures show.
What is needed is for those MRI pictures to be used as a tool to help diagnose your spine problems and pain. A good spine surgeon will look at those pictures and read them him/herself and then see how your symptoms match those pictures, if they do.
In otherwords, the discs in different vertebrae create different symptoms and locations of pain. You may have a disc bulge/herniation at one level and have no symptoms. If that is the case then it would be highly doubtful that that disc is causing a problem.
If the spine surgeon you see, only looks at the MRI report and doesn't look at the MRI pictures, or isn't able to show you where the problem is in your spine on the MRI pictures, then you don't want to use that spine surgeon.
That spine surgeon is not able to read an MRI and would do surgery on you or anyone else based on someone else's opinion only. and can not work with an MRI in the process of surgery. That's one scary thing to me and a good way of ending up with disasters for spine surgery do to errors, such as operating on the wrong disc and vertebrae.
Once you have been diagnosed by a good spine surgeon, then a treatment plan is developed.
Unless you are having symptoms that would warrant immediate spine surgery, something like cauda equina syndrome, which is loss of bowel and or bladder control which is an emergency surgery to relieve the nerve compression before the nerve is permanently damaged and you lose bowel and bladder control permanently, conservative measures are tried first to attempt to heal the discs on their own.
Since, you have already been doing physical therapy, even though you have not been diagnosed until now and gotten no pain relief or improvement, I would guess that either a trial of epidural injections and or selective nerve blocks would be tried to see if pain relief could be obtained and then return to an attempt with physical therapy.
Or they could be used in an attempt to isolate exactly where your pain is coming from, relieve the pain and get you going with physical therapy.
The epidurals and nerve blocks are done usually by a pain management doctor. That you need to be sure that they will be done using what is called a floroscope, which is a live action x-ray. The doctor has actual x-rays going as the injection is given so that visualization can be seen as the needle is inserted and it is put into the exact location it is needed and not just a guess.
But before all of this, you need that spine surgeon's evaluation, diagnosis and treatment plan first.
Good luck and if you have any other questions just post or PM me.
Good luck
Fran
