Hello Family and Friends. Yes, we are back, asking for your help (again)!

It’s been over 20 years that Mark has been dealing with lower back issues. All 5 of his discs in the Lumbar portion (L1-S1) of his spine have been diagnosed with Degenerative Disc Disease. All 5 discs have deteriorated causing a lot of pain that’s really affected his quality of life…which isn’t very good right now. The discs have been leaking onto the nerve endings which is what causes the pain in his back and legs. He lives in constant pain (24/7) which can be quite debilitating at times. Several times a day/night the pain will jump to a solid 10 (scale of 1-10 with 10 being the worst)…which can last anywhere from 30 seconds up to 20-25 minutes! This takes a huge toll on him physically and mentally!! Even with all the heavy narcotics he’s been prescribed for the last 11 years…the pain very rarely drops below a 7! He’s had multiple rounds of injections and Ablations (they burn the nerve endings to prevent the signal of pain from reaching his brain) which all failed in giving him any pain relief!

We met with a few pain doctors and 4 different neurosurgeons when we found out how severe this really was to see what his options were. All 4 neurosurgeons said they would not perform any type of fusion because they couldn’t guarantee there would be any pain relief. It would end up being a 5 level fusion with no guarantee he’d get any pain relief!! Because of the fusion he wouldn’t be able to clean himself after going to the bathroom. The only option was pain management.

Due to the amount of pain he’s in….there have been way too many days that he can barely get out of bed…he’s missed so many family functions. He had no choice but to go onto Disability roughly 15 years ago. Over the years his health has really deteriorated! He suffers from Diabetes, severe Sleep Apnea, Factor II Blood Mutation, Respiratory Depression (due to the high amount of narcotics he takes and the weight he had gained), and some other issues. We’ve almost lost him twice! With everything that’s happened to him…he's been diagnosed with severe depression (he’s been seeing his therapist every Friday for over 3 years) and really struggles with it! If you know anything about Depression, you know its a horrible disease which not only affects him…but it affects anyone who loves him.

A little over 4 years ago (5/21) we did a GoFundMe for Mark so he could have a procedure done that was minimally invasive and was the only realistic option. Naturally this procedure was not covered by insurance. The procedure he had done was called DiscSeel. Only the worst 2 discs were done. Within 3 months he was starting to get active, he didn’t miss anymore family functions and his pain level had eventually dropped from that constant 7 down to a 4 or 5! He started reducing the dosages on the Dilaudid and Fentanyl narcotics 4 months after the procedure. Eventually he was able to drop the dosages on both narcotic prescriptions by at least 40%! That’s a really big deal! He was actually able to get down on the floor and play with his grandkids! He said he felt like a new person! In December of 2021, we were on the way to the zoo with some of our grandkids…and got rear ended. That sudden jolt caused immediate pain in Mark’s lower back. From that point on his pain started to increase! We met with the neurosurgeon that did the DiscSeel procedure and she told us the two discs she had done looked great…but that sudden jolt from the accident caused more damage to the remaining 3 discs in the Lumbar portion of his spine. Currently…his pain is worse than it was before he had the DiscSeel procedure done and he’s almost back to the same amount of narcotics he was on before!! Plus…he didn’t have these sudden bursts of pain before!

We know now that the DiscSeel procedure actually does work! Having this procedure done on the 3 remaining discs would improve Mark’s quality of life drastically! It would not only give him his life back…it would help him tremendously with his depression! With this DiscSeel procedure he could potentially reduce the amount of narcotics he takes by over 50%!!

No amount is too small! Anything and everything will help!

Thank you