Life after back surgery

I had posted earlier about my plight with arthritis, chronic pain and 0 pain control. Severe arthritis was discovered during ankle surgery and a later images after an accident showed severe spinal stenosis, severe swelling in the spinal canal, along with a herniated disk (pancaked was the term used). When I left off, testing showed osteoarthritis as the diagnosis and I was waiting to find out about back surgery. Well, despite declining use of my legs and incontinence, the insurance company said "we are sorry for your troubles but according to the first radiology report it's not due to your back." All the docs I saw contradicted the report saying my nerves at L4 and below were compressed. My original orthopedic surgeon upped my gabapentin to 2700 mg a day to deal with the nerve pain from the waist down but said that was all he could do. I finally decided to get a second opinion and went to a neurosurgeon. He did an exam, looked at my images and said I needed surgery immediately and said he didn't care if insurance covered it or not, he was concerned the nerves were permanently damaged (the accident was 4 months prior to my consult with him). Anyway, he saved me, my back and my nerves. :-) He did a laminectomy, micro discectomy and general clean up of the L4-L5. He said that I will eventually need a fusion but wanted to wait as long as possible due to the risk of cascading need for future surgeries ever 5-10 years. While I still have some pain, nerve injury and limitations, I am so grateful to walk more than a few feet at a time and that the lower half of my body is functioning well.

I finally got pain management (which I was crying about not having pre-op) but unfortunately my liver is not happy with drugs, so I only use it occasionally and rely heavily on natural means and a clean diet. I'm off gabapentin completely and feel pretty good. PT is rough but hope to be back to normal in a few months, although I have to keep revising my high expectations. Testing showed no permanent damage so that gives me a lot of hope. I also learned a few things about keeping my liver healthy despite taking a lot of drugs that tax it. It took a couple months to figure out what was causing a weird rash and digestive issues post-op, which was an enormous liver with a suspected cause from the two surgeries and drugs. Acetaminophen is not my friend. The lesson here and I hope it helps someone else is to be persistent, don't care from the start if insurance will cover a procedure and quit waiting so long to see a doctor because you think it might go away on it's own. In the future if I absolutely know something is very wrong, I will go to the ER. But I am hoping to be done with the medical profession for a very long time.