Hello everyone,

let me first introduce myself. My name is bill. I'm 31 and reside in sacramento, california. I was a firefighter for just shy of 8 years when I suffered a fall through a 2nd story roof while operating at a structure fire. I suffered 2 ruptured lumbar discs (l4/l5 & l5/s1) and have since developed degenerative disc disease as well as minor instability at my l5/s1 end plate. My orthopedic surgeon is absolutely awesome and she is very much into minimally invasive procedures. She has suggested to me two separate types of surgery. Those surgeries being either anterior lumbar interbody fusion using titanium cages and allograft synthetic bone fragments so that I would not have to go through the very painfull bone graft harvest from my hip area, and the other surgery being total artificial lumbar disc replacement once the fda approves the "pro-disc" brand of artificial discs. On one side i'm very leary about fusion regardless of how minimally invasive it is because it in most cases will always cause adjacent segment disorders where as the adr allows for full range of motion. However the only down side to me with adr is the fact that nobody really seems to know about how long they will really last. Keep in mind that i'm only 31 and still plan a more low key career but none the less I need to work the rest of my life period! I'm in overall great shape still (6'2" & 220lbs *21% body fat). I am in decent cardio vascular health and generally in excellent overall health. I'd just like to hear from both parties and see what you all have had sucess with. Thanks in advance.



Bill