Advice!

SonyaB
on 4/5/11 12:53 pm - Mantachie, MS
Hi! How is everyone? I know I haven't been on here in a while. I just really need to find out what I can do to get back to losing weight. I had gastric bypass done in May 2008. I started out at 309 and right now I am at 235. I seem to lose a few pounds and then hit a stall. Then I will gain and back and forth. I have been going to the track about 3 times a week walking anywhere from 2-4 miles each time. Well, back in Nov. I started having major back pain and coming to find out I had a bulging disc for the 2nd time since May of last year. It gets to the point where my right leg is constantly tingling because the bulge is on the main nerve and so my surgeon is wanting to do surgery but telling me that it will fix my leg but can cause more pain in my back. I started back walking today and by the time I walked my 2 miles I had no feeling in my right leg at all. I am scared that if i keep walking it is just going to hurt my back more. I have got to some how get back to losing my weight. I want to get under 200 so bad. Any advice would be very very helpful in the situation I am in. Anything you could tell me I would appreciate it a lot.

Thanks
Sonya
kathkeb
on 4/5/11 1:32 pm
Sorry for the pain you are in ---- do you have access to a pool to do some non-weight bearing exercise?

Also -- I have found Weigh****cher's to be very helpful to my weight loss efforts ---- I don't know if that would work for you -- but their plan is very sensible and do-able.
Kath

  
(deactivated member)
on 4/5/11 1:36 pm - Charlotte, NC
I have recently had back surgery for ruptured L1-L2...and now have no "burning and tingling pain" but I am NEVER without pain in my back and right side. My surgery was NOT an option this time. I had a half numb pubic area and the next thing was going to be inability to urinate. That is OK now, but I live in pain that I describe as "being kicked by a horse" 24/7 and often worse if I do anything. I had ruptured L4-5 and S1 at age 24 and didn't want any back surgery then so I spent 60 days in 35 pounds of pelvic traction and not allowed out of the hospital bed except once a day to use the bathroom. It relieved the herniations and I went to PT after for 6 months and began lifting weights. I was good til last year and probably osteoporosis did this to my discs. My whole outer right thigh is still numb and half my buttock on the right too. My surgeon who did the back surgery suggested I see a Pain Management MD, but I have not elected to do so yet. I know it's coming.
I have started walking a little every day...I can barely get to the 1 mile mark and then am wiped out for 2 hrs...have to lie down.
PLEASE be careful with back surgery! Do not take it lightly. Statistically, 50% of people end up worse than they were...I know many of them. I sure wish you the BEST outcome. If I can help in any way, find me here.
Ms. Cal Culator
on 4/5/11 2:41 pm, edited 4/5/11 9:42 pm - Tuvalu
My husband's back is screwed up six ways from Sunday and the warnings about surgery are good ones.  He has fairly recently been seen by four surgeons--two neurosurgeons and two orthosurgeons.  Three of the four have warned him that until he gets to the point that life is no longer worth living, he should not have surgery on his lumbar spine.  And their reason was that well under 50% of the people who have to have their spines reconstructed--my husband will need, among other things, a cage constructed around his spine to hold the whole thing in place--are not at all satisfied.  (He also has cervical spinal damage and that causes numbness and the shooting pains in his elbow and hand.)

At this point, my husband is doing stretching exercises, goes to Physical Therapy ten or twenty times a year, and sits in a hot tub for an hour a day (that's because the misalignment of his spine has his muscles on one side stretched beyond their ability to stretch, so those are always sore, too.)  He also rides a recumbent bicycle, uses an ab-cruncher and and some other piece of equipment to increase muscle strength in the abdomen and core and little in back.

He says that the deeper the water in a swimming pool, the less pain he experiences walking in the water.  Waist high, it hurts him...chest high, not so much.

It hurts to see him suffer.  When we took the x-rays to our PCP, the PCP showed them to an NP he was training and told her "Look at this...in primary care, you will never again see a spine as bad as this one."  Not reassuring.

I hope you can find some way to lessen the agony.
sarasar7
on 4/5/11 4:56 pm
Hi,
I am not having my surgery until april the 18th, but I can share that at the end of january I fell on the ice. I ruptured a ligament , tore the meniscus, and have bone fragments in my knee. Physical therapy helped me 100%. I am done with that now and I have exercises to do. So I went to the exercise physiologist that is part of the bariatric program and shared with him about my fall, and my fear of not being able to walk as I need to. He gave me additional exercises to do with my therapy exercises. I asked him if I would lose weight with them because most of them are stationary. He told me absolutly! So I will be doing these plus walking short amounts to build back up. I also did water arobics at our local YMCA and they are very easy on your body. Hope this helps in some way. Good Luck! Sara
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