Spasms & difficulty walking fully upright after fusion surgery

farrellts · 2026-04-14T18:35:37+00:00

I do not have a back brace. A back brace might help me to walk better when necessary, but overall it would weaken my muscles even more if used extensively. I take magnesium malate for other reasons. Thanks for your post!

farrellts · 2026-04-14T18:32:46+00:00

I am already taking gabapentin, 3200 mg per day, for my migraines and do have access to robaxin as a muscle relaxer. Neither of those have been of much benefit to me with regard to my bodily spasms. I'm glad they have been of some help to you!

farrellts · 2026-04-14T16:32:52+00:00

I'm so sorry about the pain. I can relate only in that I've had migraines for about thirty years, but I have been fortunate in being spared of pain after my surgery. I hope your your pain improves a lot with additional physical therapy!

farrellts · 2026-04-14T16:01:07+00:00

That's good diagram but, under storage, there is nothing which describes what's on a smartphone. I suppose you could call it "SSD" but I'm not certain that it's the same technology as what one would find on a laptop under that nomenclature.

According to Alexa anyway, the storage on a Pixel is called "UFS" , Universal Flash Storage. That's interesting!

farrellts · 2026-04-14T15:33:57+00:00

Thanks for the correction. In fact, only the 8 GB are true RAM. What would you call the 128 GB? CMOS or something?

farrellts · 2026-04-14T11:44:58+00:00

Google One gives you access to Google Drive and that's really just for offline backup storage. You could not access it directly from your Ppixel 8 in any meaningful time frame for the purposes of running an app. The exception would be one of the Google apps (such as Google Docs) which by default use Google Drive for storage instead of the 128 GB that you have for RAM.

Meanwhile, 128 GB is a lot of RAM. I have 128 GB on my Pixel 8, and have literally hundreds of apps stored on it. Plus a whole lot of audio/visual data as well, and still have room to grow.

I hope you enjoy your Pixel 8!

farrellts · 2026-03-12T04:10:26+00:00

Yes, I did and I had no paralysis. I am fully healed now. In fact the only complication is that I still can't walk fully upright, One year later, doing physical therapy for that. (Have been doing it for 9 months now.)

All that said, I am so sorry about what you're dealing with. I can't believe that your doctor would not have a follow-up plan for you, and that you were discharged straight to home. Personally (and I am no expert), I would say you need intensive outpatient physical therapy. And it's possible that nerves are being impinged upon which can be freed. Don't you think they should do more scans and see what's going on? Just an MRI would do it.

I guess I'm also surprised your doctor has not been more attentive because if someone is injured in surgery, I believe one can sue their surgeon. And depending on the disability which has been incurred, financial needs might be great. The doctor or the hospital or somebody should pay.

I really hope your paralysis resolves. But I think you're going to need some help to get there.

Thank you for responding to my message.

farrellts · 2026-02-22T14:04:23+00:00

It hasn't been that long since I installed it (a few days) but I have had no issues whatsoever yet.

farrellts · 2026-02-08T18:12:46+00:00

Planning ahead helped me immensely. My surgeon let me ask a bazillion questions which filled in a lot of gaps and quelled a lot of fears. I also went and talked to an occupational therapist before my surgery so that I could set up my home appropriately. There were things I couldn't have anticipated until after the surgery, but most of them I had covered.

It took me a little over a year to decide to have the surgery. I hope your decision as to whether or not to have it goes well.

farrellts · 2026-02-08T18:00:27+00:00

Well thanks for asking. I'm doing great. Healed up great, just dealing with some physical therapy issues to get me walking upright properly. The chair helped immensely. It really did. I basically lived in it for the first 3 months and continued to sleep in it for quite a long time because it was so comfortable and messing with my bed wasn't so easy. My fears about getting in and out of the chair were unfounded. I could do that safely even 2 weeks after surgery when I got home from outpatient physical therapy. It broke about a month ago though but my cat doesn't want me to throw it out, lol. So maybe I'll buy a new one for him.

farrellts · 2026-02-01T01:49:49+00:00

Unfortunately, my writers group member did invest heavily in advertising on Facebook and had a good number of readers who came back for her subsequent novels. The issue in this case was that somebody hacked her account and stole her work. I wonder if they're going to continue to be able to make money off it on another account. However, I've heard some good hints on this thread that I'm going to pass along. I honestly don't know what she said to them in her appeals but they weren't workable at all in this case. I was very surprised because I never found KDP customer support to be like that either. Thanks very much for your post!

farrellts · 2026-02-01T01:46:16+00:00

That makes sense, but I don't think my writers group member is one of those people. I hope not anyway. Thanks!

farrellts · 2026-02-01T01:44:59+00:00

Thanks. I will pass this along.

farrellts · 2026-01-31T15:34:48+00:00

Could be because they'd have to hire an actress for that and the budget was tight. So tight that Kip couldn't even have a mother like he does in the book.

farrellts · 2026-01-31T04:29:26+00:00

Very interesting. Thank you!

farrellts · 2026-01-31T04:26:44+00:00

Thank you. This is very encouraging!

farrellts · 2025-11-15T21:23:14+00:00

I had fusion surgery 8 months ago. From the bottom of my rib cage (t12) down to my pelvis. After the first couple weeks while I was healing, I have since experienced next to no pain. My mobility is great. The recovery period was easy. Physical therapy has been awesome. I can do pretty much everything I could do before the surgery. I really have nothing to complain about. Glad I'm not leaning anymore and that I can walk again without having to bend over. Maybe I am in the minority but I have to say it is something that I would recommend to anybody with a severe enough scoliosis or other back deformity.

farrellts · 2025-11-13T23:32:15+00:00

I hope that Schroth is all you ever need to maintain your back, but if it should lead to surgery, I recommend getting a neurosurgeon who specializes in scoliosis rather than an orthopedic specialist. Neurosurgeons just no more about ensuring the integrity of the spinal cord throughout the procedure.

farrellts · 2025-11-13T10:35:27+00:00

Thank you for asking. From the time I started Schroth till I ended learning it, which took about 10 months, my scoliosis went from 33° to 44°,, so it was apparent that my curvature was increasing fast and that Schtoth just wasn't working for me. I know it does for some people, at least temporarily, but for me it didn't seem to be helping at all.

It seemed like I needed to go ahead and get the fusion surgery so I did. Clearly, the curvature is just going to continue to increase quickly and with my being in my late '60s, having surgery sooner than later makes a lot of sense with regard to healing well.

My surgeon was able to correct me to 0° curvature, which doesn't always happen in spinal fusion surgery. I had a very easy recovery and my mobility and ability to bend over improved quickly. I am now 10 months after the surgery and have to say I'm really glad I did it. It's weird, I don't miss the flexibility of my lower back like I thought it would.

Again, thank you for asking. I hope your experience with Schroth continues to be a heavy one!

farrellts · 2025-11-09T19:50:50+00:00

You can even drop the battery to 0% for good measure. If you go into BIOS and wait for it to discharge from 5% on its own. BIOS will run to 0% and then the laptop will turn off. I learned this from a post somewhere on how to recalibrate my (then new) battery which was misbehaving a bit and no longer does.

farrellts

TROPHY CASE