Back before I had the surgery, I still had three small kids, so there was a lot of running around with Scouts and Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts – a lot of volunteering at the schools, doing a lot of sewing. We do a lot of Halloween costumes, and anytime the kids need something done for school or school plays or that type of thing…
I actually do really enjoy cooking with the kids. It’s fun when they come in the kitchen and say, “Hey, Mom, can I help with something? I want to learn what it is you’re doing in here.”
I’m lucky enough that I do get to work from home. I have a home office. I manage conference calls from home, is what I do.
When my neck got injured, it was really very sudden. I didn’t really have any symptoms of it beforehand. I went to bed one night and everything was fine, and I woke up the next morning and kind of felt like I’d slept on my neck wrong. It didn’t get better. In fact, it just kept progressively getting worse, to the point where my left arm started feeling really weak. Within a few days after that, I couldn’t even lay down flat in bed. I was trying to prop myself up to sleep on the couch. In addition to the pain that was going on, I was starting to get exhausted.
During the whole time, I really felt frustrated. I really felt powerless, because there’s something going on and you don’t know what it is. One of the things that happened that really prompted me to contact my doctor was, I went to get a glass of water and I was trying to hold my glass, and I felt like I couldn’t hold it. I felt like I was going to drop it. That’s when I thought, “I need to go get this checked out.”
After my primary doctor looked at the MRI, she did refer me to a spine surgeon. Dr. Peterson walked in, and he immediately put me at ease. He explained, “This is what a ruptured disc means.” I had the opportunity to ask any question that I wanted – and of course, there were many of them. “How soon can we get this done? I don’t want to hurt anymore. I have things to do. I don’t have time to have a ruptured disc.”
I was able to get the Mobi-C placed in my neck, and the first thing I remember once I woke up was my husband was standing there. I looked at him and said, “Hey, I’m laying down,” because I hadn’t been able to do that for so long. I wasn’t feeling sore from the surgery. Nothing – it was just all my pain, gone. That was such a relief, because then I knew at that point, everything was going to be okay.
After surgery, I could really go back to my old routine. Even after that, I started thinking it was really time to start taking better care of myself – just a healthier lifestyle for me that then helped the entire family. I started eating better, working out. My husband started working out as well with me. We started being a lot more active. We would go on walks together. Even now, still, the family will go on walks together around the neighborhood.
A good part of this active and healthier lifestyle is that I was able to lose 70 pounds, and I’ve been able to keep that off for about three years now. I feel happier and more self-confident.
My Mobi-C surgery was seven years ago, and I find that today, I’m even more active than I was before the surgery. We love going to Disney. We go as often as we can. On our last trip to Disney, my husband and my daughter and I got to dive in Epcot’s big aquarium. We just tried indoor skydiving for the first time. That was an absolute blast.
If I knew somebody else had the choice between the traditional fusion surgery or the Mobi-C, hands down, I would tell them to get the Mobi-C, just from my personal experience because the recovery was so quick and because I have had no limitations. I’m still as flexible as I was. It’s something that I would absolutely recommend if you have the choice.
My name’s Barbara. I had my Mobi-C surgery in August of 2007, and this is my Mobi-C.