Maureen’s Lumbar Fusion Patient Story
I am a former college and pro basketball player (54yo female) and short-time distance swimmer who has had about 8 sports surgeries. I was embarrassed by all of the surgeries and hoping to never have another one. I’d been fighting against my back for years after seeing a bilateral pars fracture start in 2005. Over the last two years, the fracture widened and started to lead to constant pain and more humbling nerve damage that was impacting my daily life more and more each season. I tried every course, book, exercise possible and I lost weight and wore braces, but as one doctor said, “You can no longer outrun this.” I saw four medical professionals, and after I tried to convince them all I could beat it, they said that I had to stop kicking the can down the road or I’d risk permanent and more severe damage. Dr. Girardi was the last doctor I saw and I found him through a random chiropractor I’d met who said to me, “If my mother was going to need back surgery, I’d send her to Girardi.”
I did everything I could including pre-hab with PT going into surgery and I forced myself to do what workouts I could do so that I’d go into surgery as lean as possible, and almost everything required some degree of pain — from a butter knife to a kitchen knife stuck in my back almost constantly. I had surgery at 2pm on a Tuesday and it went well aside from nausea that ran until the next morning. I highly recommend sitting up at least slightly, walking as soon as you can, getting off the pain meds (except to sleep for the first few days) AND most of all, do what Dr. Girardi and his team say to do, which is pretty much walk for 30 minutes max (for me, that was all I was told to do for three months). All of the stories I heard of failed surgeries mostly pertained to men who did too much too soon largely because they, like me, had such relief that they thought they were healed. Thankfully my spine fused at three months so I felt a tremendous amount of relief and gratitude.
I was cleared for PT at 3 months, but honestly, I took a conservative PT route and did most of it on own. I wanted to wait until six months given that I had a slight neck issue, too, that I’d focused on rehab wise and I was a little paranoid about the pain coming back. Six months post-op, I feel fantastic and I walk around the city and can’t believe I can make it more than 15 minutes without holding my halves together. I am finally getting my life back. I do not have to go back to sports or competitions at my age at all, but I will lift and swim and do fitness classes in moderation. Yet I’ll never deadlift or put a rack on my back again.
During every class and workout, I do now, I am still in awe that I am no longer in pain, and I often think of how Dr. Girardi said that I’d probably regret not having the surgery sooner, and he was right. Walking around with a broken back that I could not fix was wrecking my life and outlook on everything and it was impacting my job as a coach and ideally a role model for young athletes. I also recently picked up piano playing, but I could only sit for about nine minutes and I’d have to take laps and stretch prior to surgery. Now I can sit and play and join classes and jams again. My future includes daily efforts to stay lean, mobile and powerful for my general health and to avoid future potential prices to pay for playing too much basketball. I am eternally grateful to have found Dr. Girardi and his team. They did their jobs, and now the rest is up to me
I had surgery on DEC 16, 2025 and I’ll probably never forget this date for the rest of my life.
/ 965 Reviews