That's how long you should plan to be a the clinic on your test day. Let's go over what you get.
Strength and Muscle Recruitment Test:
Test lumbar strength via Medx (very interesting and relevant - measures your strength curve and ROM against averages of healthy individuals of same age and weight, then graphs your information in relation to. As you can imagine most back pain sufferers don't score very well here.
Muscle Recruitment/Nerve test - Compares firing order of paraspinal muscles on both sides of spine. In healthy individual, they should fire together and overlap on graph. When the system is mechanically compromised, one will be taking up for the other or not working at all
Meet with generalist and perform basic physical, ultrasound, etc....basically do you meet the basic health requirements to get this done
Meet with Zeegers to go over films and tests - "Yep those sure are black thin and painful...corresponding with pain dermatome patterns"
Bone density test
Anesthesiologist
X-Ray to give them a good idea of prosthetic sizing
Neurologist - Looks at you with a new set of eyes and provides diagnosis....Zeegers stated that he likes to use him as an unbiased second opinion.
Final meeting with Zeegers..."We feel like we have an excellent diagnosis...see you in the morning"
Tests not given that could have been...MRI, Discogram (deemed uneccesary)
Checked in at 0830...Left for hotel at 1945 (745 PM)
Lesson learned. Pack a breakfast/lunch/dinner...or send someone to get you some.
The staff and the entire experience was great today. Yes, the day was long, but that's a lot to fit into one day. I spent 2 hours with Dr. Zeegers today and about another 1.5 hours on the phone before coming to Germany. Not only does his reputation precede him, but he is accessible and genuinely caring regarding his patients. My wife sat in on the visits. She likes him, and today has really confirmed in her own mind why we chose Zeegers and Alpha.
Surgery will be tomorrow at 11:30....Zeegers told me to get a good nights sleep...I told him it was his sleep that I was concerned about
