I promised to discuss what Dr. F had recommended and see I haven't done that yet, so here goes.

Dr. F advised me that the titanium cage I had been given had subsided, ie. it had sunk into the bone of L5 and S1 and was not straight. He told me that titanium was 16 times harder than bone so that could be expected. He said that the current thinking - remember this is 2 years after my operation and I'm hearing this from a younger surgeon - involves using a plastic "ring" instead of titanium. He showed me one and it looked great. You could see just by looking at it how it would rest on the vertebra rather than cutting into it, and I liked the way it tapered slightly to account for the natural curve of the spine at that point.

Anyway, the titanium was in there and there was nothing to be done to change that. Dr. F recommended going in through the rear with screws and instrumentation to prop up L5 and to prevent the cage from further subsiding. The instrumentation he showed me looked nicely designed, but bulky and uncomfortable. He put me in touch with another of his patients to put me at ease. His other patients, though, didn't have a chunk of titanium in them already, which wouldn't budge. Having said that, many of the scans he showed me looked very scary - jockeys who'd been thrown from their horses, etc. It's enough to make you want to think three times about any more operations, and made me realize how "lucky" I am.

I'd rather have a go with a peripheral nerve stimulator for a while which is minimally invasive. Let's see how that goes.