Recovery process part 1

I had spinal decompression surgery on the 26th April 2022. It was required because I had a compressed nerve in my spine that severely impacted my quality of life and wouldn’t heal itself. The surgeon said it was a success and I was discharged the next day. I was able to walk straight away but it was rather painful to move, especially if there was any kind of bending or twisting involved, so I tried to keep that to a minimum. I used my initial period of recovery where I wasn’t able to do much more then walk from resting place to resting pace to complete my Training Peaks accreditation and to work on this website.

After the first week I slowly began to introduce yoga into my day. I have always been very tight and inflexible but my left leg in particular which was the side of my body where the nerve pain was, became half useless. I struggled to make it move like it used to before my surgery and having spent over a year working and training with it the way it was, I think I just enforced the poor movement patterns of my leg and imbalances in my body, and I need to rectify this. I have now began to walk up to 3 miles and ride a stationary bike in the shed. However what I am struggling with is understanding what is the safest and most useful rehab to be doing this soon post op. I found a very interesting paper which looked at all of the different post op literature given out by different hospitals. The key take home was that wherever you had your surgery you would of been given completely different advice on everything from what exercises and activities to do and most importantly at what point post surgery you should be doing them. This has left me with the opinion that they do not really know, mainly I assume because every patient is different. I am basing my recovery programme on the fact that I was very active and relatively fit for someone in the amount of pain I was in and with the restriction of movement I had. Therefore I am more capable physically post op because I was more capable pre op. Ultimately though, my recovery is pain led and I am and will continue to be terrified of re-herniation so all I can do is tune into my body’s signals and pay attention.

I will try and make these recovery blogs a regular thing and hope to hear from anyone who reads this and has any help and insights, or if there are people who are going through or have come through a major rehabilitation, please feel free to reach out.