If you’re experiencing back pain, don’t ignore it — it’s going to get worse. Mike Russo
The car accident happened in 2004, while Mike Russo was living in Texas. It inverted the natural curves of both his neck and his lower back, and set in motion twenty years of facet joint syndrome, chronic pain, and a spine that kept giving ground.
He refused to organize his life around it. “I chose not to let this get in the way of my life,” he says. He worked in human resources, then at Bayer, where he logged 1.4 million travel miles over a decade — all of it through roughly thirty fusion surgeries.
Dr. John Moossy, a senior spinal surgeon and director of UPMC’s Center for Pain Management, carried much of that care for close to ten years. “Every surgery, the chief complaint has been solved,” Mike says.
By 2023, though, the deformity had won the argument. He could no longer stand up straight. Walking any distance meant pushing a shopping cart to lean on.
That August, Dr. Agarwal reconstructed his lumbar and thoracic spine, with David Hamilton, MD, assisting. In February 2024 a second operation reconstructed the upper thoracic spine and reinforced the cervical spine above it.
“This reconstruction surgery gave me back my lumbar curve, fixed my neck,” Mike says. It also gave him back two inches of height. He walked 3.6 miles the day after the first procedure. For the first time in years, he sleeps through the night.
The trade is real: his neck does not turn as far as it used to. Set against two decades of collapse, he considers it a good one. He volunteers, gardens, and is teaching himself German.
His advice is blunt. “If you’re experiencing back pain, don’t ignore it — it’s going to get worse.”