Jan Oosterveld is smiling again. But life had not always been so breezy for the 79-year-old “youngster.” A curvature of his spine created near constant pain that kept him from even the simplest of life’s pleasures; sitting hurt, sleeping was fitful, getting in and out of bed was an exercise in pain management.
“Sometimes it got so bad that I could not walk,” Jan said.
Jan’s previous doctors only managed the pain with various pills. Still, by the end of the day, Jan’s pain returned. Clearly, to feel better, he needed to get to the source of his back issues.
So, fed up with ten years of increasingly debilitating back pain, he began an Internet search for doctors and therapies that could help him get his life back. His search led him to the Spine Institute Northwest and Dr. Solomon Kamson.
Dr. Kamson looked at the MRIs the couple had brought from another doctor, and immediately saw the problem; stenosis of the spinal column in three different areas of his back.
Dr. Kamson recommended a lumbar decompression with a cage implant and facet fixation.
“I really appreciate the way he calmly explains to you what’s going to happen, what he is going to do, and particularly the follow-up is tremendously good,” Jan said.
Triangulating on the surgery site through three tiny incisions, Kamson used a variety of high-tech tools to target and remove the bulging disc material pressing on Jan’s spinal nerves.
Jan drove almost two hours back home the next day. Prior to surgery, sitting in a car for that long was impossibly excruciating, he said.
“Dr. Kamson is so gentle for the kind of surgery he does,” Jan’s wife told us.
“And today, after nine and a half months, he’s having no pain, no nothing, and he’s grown taller while I’ve grown shorter,” she said laughing.
Watch Jan’s story in his own words in the video below.