[RabidJ]

Once again, I have taken forever to update.* I have made a decision on which Doctor I will be using.* I have decided to go with Dr.* Biren Desai in Cologne, Germany.*

I am going to leave out some detail on why I chose him over Dr. Tropiano because I am tired and a little stressed out about my upcoming procedure.*

So I ended up driving up to Cologne, Germany about a month ago to meet Dr. Desai and was unbelievably impressed with his patience, detail in explaining my situation, his honesty, and his kindness.* The procedure that he will be performing will be a hybrid procedure with a disc replacement and L3-L4, L4-L5, and a fusion at L5-S1.

Reasons I chose him:

Highly competent. Many years of experience with adr (I’ll try to update on exactly how many later)

Uses LP-ESP disc

His ability to do multi-level operations. I was debating whether to leave L3L4 alone because it may not be causing pain but more than likely will be in 5-10 years since it is damaged. Since I’m hoping that this will be my last experience with back surgery, I decided to get it done (extremely tough decision). In France, Doctors are hesitant to perform more than one disc level using adr.

Lastly, price. I believe that I am getting the same world class quality health care as any other person in Europe at a price that is doable. I’d like to point out that I will be requesting that the Veterans Affairs pay for this operation via their Foreign Medical program but am still uncertain that this will actually come to pass.

Note: I tried to avoid the fusion but had a couple of Dr.’s confirm that I have an unstable vertebrae at L5-S1 and did not want to risk any issues by forcing an adr operation at this level. I’m sad about this but I will try and make the most of it.

Prayers are appreciated since I will be operated on in 4 days. I will no longer post here but on the ADR outcome section of this forum.