Meet Joyce

Are you coping with chronic orthopedic pain? Joyce can tell you where to go for relief.

NAME: Joyce L.
HOMETOWN: Jamaica, NY
AGE: 84
PROCEDURE: Lumbar Spinal Fusion

Meet Joyce L., 84, of Jamaica, NY

Too many people try to live with painful, debilitating orthopedic conditions, whether in the back, knee, shoulder or hip.

That once included sprightly 84 year old great grandmother Joyce Levy.  In the late 1980s, Joyce began to experience low back pain that worsened and intensified with each passing year.  She tried chiropractors, acupuncturists, physical therapy, epidural pain management and religiously strapped on a waist support day-after-day to stem the pain – but none of it helped.

In June 2016, Joyce’s pain was “excruciating,” radiating down both legs. She couldn’t sit down, coughing and raising her arms hurt, and to sleep she had to sit up in bed propped up with pillows. Her doctor ordered an MRI which showed that she was “losing collagen” in the lumbar spine and that she had spinal stenosis, three bulging discs were compressing the nerves on both sides of spine.  “The pain was overwhelming; I couldn’t think straight,” Joyce says.

The beginning of the end of Joyce’s painful journey started when her doctor referred her to Mount Sinai South Nassau Center for Advanced Orthopedics, where orthopedic spine surgeon specialist Dr. Andrew A. Tarleton performed lower lumbar spinal fusion on L4 and L5 discs on January 24, 2017.

The next morning, Joyce walked down a hallway without pain. “I felt like I had wings at that point.  The nurses said I should use a walker for safety reasons, but I didn’t need it.”

Joyce is one of hundreds of people each year who have their mobility restored and pain eliminated by expert orthopedic surgeons at Mount Sinai South Nassau, who use the latest advancements in minimally invasive surgical techniques and technologies to repair common and serious musculoskeletal injuries.

 

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Mount Sinai South Nassau Center for Advanced Orthopedics