Patient Experiences » Back Surgery: Sciatic Pain

If her shop's name - Cottage in the Pines - does not evoke images of calm, talking with Cathy Serrano certainly will. Cathy, a shop owner and legal assistant, refused to let her adult-onset chronic back pain disrupt her steady pace. The avid walker treks nine miles a day. But everything changed in May 2009, when her pain took an excruciating turn for the worst.

 "I have had back pain all my adult life," Cathy explains, "but in May 2009 I developed pain in my left leg from my lower back down to the top of my calf. I thought it would go away but while camping at Inks Lake the pain became severe." Cathy had to be taken out of the park via ambulance. Ultimately, the native Texan who relocated back to her home state in 2004 after living in Colorado, experienced numbness in the foot suggestive of nerve damage.

"I knew I was going to need surgery," she says.

Cathy initially saw a surgeon in the Dallas area, but left the office feeling that she needed a second opinion. When she returned to Austin, a friend recommended NeuroTexas. On June 3, 2009, Cathy saw neurosurgeon Michael Webb, MD.

"Over the years, I have seen several physicians in Texas and Colorado for my back pain," Cathy explains. "Dr. Webb was different. I went in with a list of questions and did not have to ask any of them. He answered them all when he showed me my MRI. When I left his office I understood exactly what he was going to do and why I needed it. Dr. Webb was supposed to be my second opinion, but he became my first choice."

Cathy had a herniated disc that was pressing on the sciatic nerve. On June 9, 2009, Dr. Webb performed a diskectomy at St. David's Medical Center. Cathy went home the same day.

"St. David's was amazing," Cathy says. "The staff approached patient care from the perspective of the patient. My husband, who had been in the waiting room, also commented that the communication was excellent."

Two days following surgery Cathy walked five miles without taking any pain medication.

"The surgery felt very non-invasive," she says. "The pain on the sciatic nerve was relieved immediately. I feel incredible."

Patient Stories

 

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