Most people feel frustrated when they have to miss out on a planned activity, or they fall behind at work, because of an illness like a cold or the flu. But when you’re living with chronic pain, you don’t miss out for just a day or even a week—it can start to feel like you’ll never get back to doing the things you love. If you’re going to get back your life, you’ve got to find a way to get relief from your pain.
Tim Watts suffered from sciatic nerve pain that traveled down his legs and caused numbness in his feet. Working on his farm, “it was hard to get in and out of tractors and those sorts of things,” he says, and he couldn’t enjoy the outdoors the way he had in the past. Even picking up his toddler granddaughter was becoming too painful.
Tim tried conservative treatments like pain medication, physical therapy, and steroid injections, but any pain relief these brought didn’t last. He had talked with doctors about traditional back surgery, but he wasn’t ready to commit to that kind of procedure. But after talking to Dr. Solomon Kamson, “I felt very comfortable with what he had to say,” Tim recalls. “I just kind of felt like this was the place I needed to go.”
Tim’s sciatic pain stemmed from two ruptured discs and stenosis in his lumbar spine. He had laser spine surgery to trim the damaged tissue on his L4 and L5 discs, and decompression helped to relieve the excess pressure on his spinal cord. As soon as Tim came out of his minimally invasive procedure, “all the tension that was in my legs was gone.”
Now, Tim is easing back into life on the farm and returning to his outdoor pursuits. He’s still getting back his strength, but “as far as all of my pain that was there, it’s 100% gone.”
Listen to more of Tim’s story, in his own words: