Feel I got no choice

@bobby1221

I hear you. Back issues and mental health problems as well. Do me a favour, though, and get some advice before making a decision? Your GP, therapist, social worker, family member, best friend, etc. This is a big decision to make.

I'm not sure if I'm reading your post right, but it sounds like your mental health problems were keeping you from working before your back went. Is that right? If that's the case, were you getting ESA support group just because of your MH probs before your back went?

It sounds like you don't really want to have the operation. Can I ask why?

Most (all?) spinal surgeries don't fix your back 100%. Surgery may well improve it, sometimes a lot, but it's unlikely to make your back the way it was before you hurt it. Even if the surgery magically fixed your back 100%, would you be able to work afterwards? Is your mental health good enough, or would it improve enough after the surgery, for you to get a job? 

I'm concerned that you might have an operation you don't want to have and still not be able to work. That wouldn't help your chances of getting ESA, either. 

You say that there's a 70% chance you'd improve with this op, and 10% it wouldn't change anything That means there's a 20% chance it could get worse. Are you comfortable with that? It could potentially get a little worse, a fair amount worse, or  much, much, worse. Did you get those percentages from the surgeon? Be aware that they may not be correct. I'm not saying that the surgeon is lying, but they may not be aware of how all their patients ended up doing. I saw my surgeon a week after my op and a month after. 6 weeks after is when I developed a problem, and I doubt she ever found out. 

I ruptured my L5/S1 disc 10 years ago. Nothing helped after 2.5 months, and I was in agony and couldn't stand. A neurosurgeon recommended an operation and told me the chances were 80% better, 10% no effect, 10% worse. 

I went for it. 6 weeks afterward, I developed severe chronic pain, including agonizing back spasms, sciatica, numb foot, neuropathic pain in back, a permanent spasm, and paralyzed spinal muscles. I've also got some incontinence, and suffer from mobility problems. I've  worked (part-time) 2 years out of the past 10, and it didn't go very well. Despite having every treatment possible, it only got 1/3 better. My MH went down the tube as a result. I'm now severely disabled, and in moderate-severe pain all the time.

About a year after my surgery, I looked up how likely my outcome is: 1-2%, so I was really, really unlucky. But it has to happen to somebody, right? I also found out that for that particular surgery, there's actually a 33% chance of improvement, 33% chance of no change, and 33% chance it'll get worse. Again, I'm sure my surgeon wasn't lying - this paper I found (and some others) was a big meta-analysis of 10's of thousands of these surgeries. My surgeon probably wasn't aware of it. (This was 10 years ago, so things might have changed now).

I'm not saying that it'll be like this for you, but this kind of thing does happen, and there are a lot of outcomes which aren't as bad as mine, but are still worse than neutral. 

If you speak to your GP, do some research on your condition and the operation, get a 2nd opinion, and check the success rate of your surgeon, then you'll get a better idea of the risks. I'd also look into other treatments. Again, I'm not saying that neurosurgeons lie to patients, but when you're a surgeon, surgery is the obvious way to fix things, you know? There might be other things (physiotherapy, osteopathy, hydrotherapy, injections, stretching, meds, pain management, etc.) that might do enough that you don't need the op. 

Tbc