At 61 years old, Mark Tidball had lived with back pain for two decades, keeping him from the lifestyle that he had enjoyed. “I was pretty active, snowmobiling, four-wheeling, hiking, hunting, and all, all that kind of stuff,” Mark remembers. An earlier job had him performing extensive lifting, and though he’s not certain, Mark guesses that was where his trouble began. Before he came to the Spine Institute Northwest, Mark’s pain level “was getting to the point where every time I would get up off the couch or something, it would take me a minute of walking to get kind of normal.”
Mark found relief from his pain thanks to his wife, who had successful spine surgeries for her back problems. “[She] came to Dr. Kamson, and he helped her tremendously with several operations,” Mark says. She told Dr. Kamson that her husband’s back bothered him, “and so he came in one day and said, ‘I’m gonna take a look at your back.'” With x-rays, Dr. Kamson was able to show Mark the source of his pain — discs in his lower spine had collapsed, and his vertebrae were grinding against each other “bone on bone.”
After seeing the success Solomon Kamson had with his wife’s surgeries, Mark says, “I had pretty high expectations that he could help me.” Mark was right: With lumbar decompression at the Spine Institute Northwest, Mark is now “almost pain free,” and looking forward to returning to the active lifestyle he once enjoyed.
Hear more of Mark’s story: