Dr. Osborne has been doing these for 25 years, and currently he’s doing them once or twice a day four or five days a week, so it’s probably safe to say that he’s done many hundreds, or over a thousand in his career.
For him to say my left side was top 10 one of the most difficult he’d ever done, it really means my anatomy created quite rare circumstances. I’m tall and skinny, so I was a little surprised to hear the ligament was buried so deeply, as I have basically no body fat. I’m sure he had to be very careful avoiding important nerves and vascular structures that were probably all bunched closely together because of how thin I am.
I also have suspected hypermobile ehlers danlos. Dr. Osborne said my facial nerves were laid out with an unusual, atypical configuration, and that the nerve layout on my left and right sides were totally different. All this is to say, to anyone seeking surgery with Dr. Osborne, it’s very unlikely your operations and recovery will be as complicated as mine, and so far my recovery has been pretty smooth. There were several days in the first week that I had a lot of pain, but Dr. O wrote me extra painkillers because my surgery was so extensive it warranted it.
The day after my difficult surgery, the doc asked how I felt, and I told him “I feel like I got punched in the neck”… his response was “you got in a fight with Mike Tyson.” He also said I was not being a wuss, and that he knew what had happened internally, and based on that he could assure me my recovery was going to be slower and more painful than most people. My right side which had been done two days before was smooth sailing and hardly gave me any pain in comparison. It has been 11 days since my first surgery and 9 days since my second, the more difficult one. Things are already much better than the first week, but still pain and swelling.
I am so grateful that I chose Osborne over the other options, as he told me he believed any other surgeon would have been unable to remove my left side ligament and would have left it in and sewn me back up after digging around fruitlessly for a while. I really believe this is true and not just something he was saying to make himself look good. He said my case was a challenge and taught him something, he learned from it. He sounded like he was unsure he could actually remove my ligament during the surgery, but in the end he pulled through for me.
This guy is not just an incredible surgeon, but I really felt that he is also a good human being. I think he truly cares about his patients, and that is so rare. He listens and answers questions without being dismissive, his bedside manner is very calm, he doesn’t have a big ego at all, he just seems incredibly grounded and even keeled, he’s also very intelligent, polite, and genuinely a nice guy to talk to. He even gave my girlfriend and I good restaurant recommendations for the neighborhood, told us about a good farmers market with lots of tasty food, and he introduced us to his son who happened to be at the office with him and was a very polite young man.
The only complaint with his office is the prices and them not taking insurance, but I tell you, you really get what you pay for with Dr. O. He’s a class act. His staff even gave me a handwritten note from the doctor on the day I was flying back home from LA, the note said it was a tough case but he believed I had made the right decision by getting surgery.
Now I just nervously wait for swelling to go down and see if the vascular and nerve compression improves. I believe I’ve already noticed some small improvements in symptoms but it’s hard to tell so early. My right ligament was 6cm long and my left ligament was a little over 6cm long, he was able to extract them both in one piece without breaking them into sections.
To anyone who sees this post in the future, feel free to message me if you have questions about my experience with Osborne’s office or my surgery and recovery. I can also let you know how the insurance appeals process shakes out. Wishing you guys all the best. This forum has been a source of comfort and solidarity for me during my period of diagnosis and the search for a surgeon and the lead up to surgery and recovery, it also helped inform me what to expect for recovery, and the different nuances of how the styloidectomies are performed, what kind of qualities to look for in a surgeon.
Osborne’s approach seems to be minimally invasive, leave fairly cosmetic scarring, and he shaves the process down as far as he can to the skull base while also removing the entire ligament. He does not bother with jugular vein stents or shaving the C1 vertebrae and does not believe these are necessary, and he as a rule will never perform the surgery through the transoral route.
My best advice is if you can afford him, just do it. I debated for a few months whether I should go to someone cheaper or someone with much less experience who may be covered by my insurance, the stress of the insurance and choosing a surgeon brought me to tears and often times to extreme anger. Thank God I just went with the best, most experienced, most expensive guy. It hurt knowing I was paying double what others might charge, but as it turned out I was one of those few rare cases where just about anyone else would’ve botched me and left me with permanent damage or simply refused to perform the operation after opening me up.
Dr. Osborne 5/5 stars. His staff was mostly great as well, besides some frustrations I had with the way I was treated by one person, but overall it was a very good experience.
