As June began — in 2005 — I hit the books. After poring through endless reams of information online, I found my second opinion in Dr. Thomas Zimmerman. He had a real practice, The Spine Institute, which really was just a label on the door of what turned out to be a regular run-of-the-mill doctor’s office, attached to Saint Mary’s Hospital in the Panhandle. (Today, it’s known as the San Francisco Spine Surgeons Group at St. Mary’s Spine Center - what a mouthful.)

Dr. Zimmerman was not warm and fuzzy, but he certainly pulled no punches. He looked at my films and quickly determined I needed more than one replacement, and that was that. Dr. Z told me he had done countless fusions, pedicle screw insertions, laminectomies, discectomies, you name it. Artificial Disc Replacements? He acknowledged he’d only done “a handful,” and of course single-level only.

This was when I learned of Dr. Wolfgang Berger*: the man who would perform both of my ADR surgeries (during one of which when I had the stroke). Dr. Z brought up his name and spoke very highly of him. He also mentioned Dr. Jakob Strasser*; they were both major proponents of the ProDisc technology, both based in Germany, each with their own practice. Dr. Berger was in charge of a long-term study to follow every patient he worked with. He published many articles on the topic; his name was easy to find when I went looking for additional data about him in various medical journals, and the global spinal orthopedic community as a whole. He had been doing multi-level replacements for twenty years. He was highly respected and well renowned not only for his skills, but also for his bedside manner. It is rare to find doctors who can do that.

Dr. Zimmerman talked more about the other/various prostheses that were out there, but not FDA-approved or on the market yet: Flexi-Core, PDN Prosthetic Disc Nucleus, Acroflex Disc, Mobi-C, and more. The Charité was the only one. As I read more and more about the ProDisc, it started to dawn on me that maybe — just maybe — the ProDisc was the answer.

We were in a waiting game, of course, holding out for the FDA to get off their asses and make a decision about the ProDisc’s viability. Maybe we could cajole some higher ups (that would be Evil Insurance Company #1) and grant me the fix I needed to put my life back together. Fingers crossed.

As it turns out, it took more than a year from the time Dr. Z and I had the conversation (above) to get approval for ProDisc single-level ADR from the FDA.

Which didn’t mean much anyway, since what I needed was multi-level and there was no way insurance would pay for it.

*Doctor names changed for privacy.