How I avoided spine surgery at 71

By last spring I could not stand long enough to make breakfast. The pain started in my lower back and ran down the back of my left leg to the ankle. Some mornings I sat on the edge of the bed for ten minutes before I trusted myself to stand.

I was an engineer for forty years, and I like to understand a problem before I fix it. The MRI showed a herniated disc pressing on a nerve. Two surgeons looked at it and said the same word: discectomy. The second one had a date for me in six weeks.

Why I looked for another way

I was not against surgery. My brother had his back done in his sixties and it went well. But he also spent three months recovering, and I had promised my wife we would spend the summer with our grandchildren in Oregon.

My daughter found CuraMosaic and sent me the link with one line: just read it, Dad. I did not like needles and I had never tried acupuncture. What changed my mind was the first phone call. The coordinator asked for my MRI and passed it to the physician in Bellevue before anyone talked about prices.

The first week

My physician spent almost an hour with me before she touched a needle. She read my pulse, looked at my tongue, and asked about my sleep, which nobody else had asked about. Then she showed me on a diagram where each needle would go and why.

The needles were less than I feared. A small pinch, then a dull heaviness in the leg, which she said was what she was looking for. I lay there for thirty minutes listening to the rain.

For the first three sessions, nothing much changed. On the fourth night I slept through until six for the first time in months.

Ten days by the water

The programme was ten nights. I had treatment every morning, and in the afternoons I walked. On the first day I made it to the end of the hotel corridor. By the end of the second week I walked to the waterfront and back, about a mile.

My wife came with me. While I was at the clinic she explored the botanical garden and found a dim sum place we went back to three times. A companion from CuraMosaic drove us to every appointment, which mattered more than I expected, because I could not sit in a car for long.

“Two surgeons said discectomy. I never had the operation.”

Cancelling the surgery

When I got home I saw the second surgeon again. He examined me, read the notes from Bellevue, and agreed there was no reason to operate now. I cancelled the date in June.

I am not cured. If I sit too long on a plane, I feel it. But I do the exercises the clinic gave me every morning, and I go back for a week each spring.

If you are where I was, my advice is simple. Send them your scans and ask the question. The worst they can tell you is no.