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Connie Negrete dealt with back pain most of her life and suffers from degenerative disc disease, which is a condition in which a damaged disc causes pain. A former Fresno State basketball player – and now physical education teacher at Sanger Unified – Negrete exhausted all non-surgical treatments to relieve her pain.

“It got worse and worse. It was just pain after I played or pain after being up for a long time,” Negrete says. “It got to the point where I couldn’t bend over to tie my shoes … I couldn’t pick up my daughters. If I moved the wrong way, it would send pain shooting down my leg.”

Negrete’s chiropractor said if she wanted to continue her active lifestyle of workouts and sports, she would likely need surgery.

“After years of trying to help relieve some of the pain, he basically told me there wasn’t a whole lot more he could do for me and he recommended neurosurgeon Nicholas Levine,” Negrete says.

And Dr. Levine agreed: “She developed pain no matter what she did. She tried multiple conservative treatments with physical therapy. She even changed the types of exercise and intensity she was doing, but she had constant pain.”

Dr. Levine says Negrete couldn’t do the things she wanted to do at home with her family, so it really was a problem for her. He recommended a spinal disc replacement – a special procedure he usually recommends for people who already have active lifestyles and want to stay active.

Negrete knew having fusion surgery could limit her current sports and workout activities.

“I’d never heard of the lumbar arthroscopy. I knew there were fusions, but I didn’t want to lose any mobility, which was one of my biggest concerns,” she says.

Looking at the options, Negrete decided to have her life-changing surgery with Dr. Levine close to home, at Community Regional Medical Center.

“We don’t have to have people traveling to the bigger cities in California to have this done. We can do it right here,” says Dr. Levine.

“Traditionally, when you have back pain like Connie’s you do a fusion with rods and screws and you take the disc out and you fuse that level, so there’s less motion. And by doing all of that you prevent the pain generation, which comes from the disc and the joints moving abnormally.”

Dr. Levine says there are different types of spinal operations for specific types of pain and causes of that pain. He felt a lumbar arthroplasty would help Negrete continue her active lifestyle.

“When he said I would still have a lot of mobility it helped make my decision,” she says. “There was nothing else that was helping.”

Lumbar arthroplasty allowed Negrete more normal motion and provided her stability. She was also excited to have a less-invasive surgery without cutting through the muscles in the back.

“Doing incisions in the back, whether it’s minimally invasive or not, does require cutting through the muscle to get to the disc space and to get to the area where you’re putting the rods and screws,” Dr. Levine says. He performed the surgery by accessing her discs from the front instead of the back. He explains why this is easier for the patient.

“So I work with a general surgeon who exposes the anterior (front) portion of the spine. And by doing that you’re not going through all the muscles on the side of the spine or on the back of the spine. And you’re addressing the disc right from the front where the disc is.”

Negrete couldn’t believe what a difference this made in her recovery. “When I got up for the first time in the hospital, it was just overwhelming to not have that pain. For me, it’s still emotional,” she says, wiping her eyes.

“When you do the right operation, for the right problem, in the right person, you do have a response like hers,” Dr. Levine says.

And while arthroplasty is not for everyone, Dr. Levine says those with active lifestyles who want to maintain that activity and are generally younger often are good candidates for the procedure.

“It was amazing. And then as the days went on, there was no pain at all. I just always anticipated it and then it was never there,” Negrete says. “You hear people say, ‘Oh, it changed my life’ – and it did. It gave me back what I lost for so many years.”

Negrete says she is grateful to her doctors and chiropractor for recommending this surgery.

“They really did give me my life back,” she says.

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