"Six months later, I'm sitting here with no pain down my leg and no pain in my back."
A team-based spine surgery eases years of back pain in an army veteran.
A routine patrol of a village in Afghanistan more than a decade ago altered the course of Michael Daley’s life.
The Toms River native, then a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, was searching for terrorists. The first few vehicles in his convoy trundled along safely. But the vehicle Michael occupied rolled over an improvised explosive device (IED).
“The blast ripped off the entire front end of the vehicle,” Michael remembers.
“My feet were hanging out of it. I was supposed to be medevac’d, but we were in too dangerous of a zone, so I got rushed back to my unit.”
Miraculously, Michael survived. But the incident left him with intense lower back pain that wouldn’t go away.
When he returned to civilian life, Michael pushed through the discomfort. Because of the pain, he sometimes needed to take sick leave from his day job as an immigration services officer. Other times, he had to skip outings with his two young children, Max and Skye.
“On my worst days, I’d have sharp pain in my entire lower back that went down my left leg,” Michael says. “The pain was there whether I was sitting or standing.”
Memories of his father having a bad experience with back surgery in the 1990s led Michael to put off surgery.
He toughed it out for 10 years, trying conservative therapies such as epidural injections that brought only short-term relief. Eventually, the pain got so bad that Michael began to lose feeling in his left leg.
Michael’s wife, Crystal, familiar with his military demeanor, sensed a shift. “She told me that I always have a strong face,” Michael says. “But toward the end she could see that the pain got so sharp and intense that I started wincing.”
Finding a Solution
In early 2024, Michael began looking for a specialist who could ease his pain.
He found one nearby: orthopedic surgeon Chanakya Jandhyala, MD, a member of the RWJBarnabas Health Medical Group who practices at Community Medical Center (CMC).
Dr. Jandhyala—who invites his patients to call him Dr. Sean—ordered an X-ray that revealed the extent of Michael’s problems.
“He had severe degenerative disk disease at the lowest level of the lumbar spine, L5, and the spot where the sacral spine starts, S1,” Dr. Jandhyala says, indicating specific adjoining vertebrae, or stacked bones that make up the spinal column. Michael also had spondylolisthesis, a condition in which neighboring vertebrae overlap, which was destabilizing his spine and causing even more pain.
Both are common orthopedic conditions but were unusually severe for someone so young, likely due to Michael’s war injuries.
The solution: an L5/S1 anterior lumbar fusion performed through the abdomen and back (see sidebar). “Dr. Sean looked me in the eye and said, ‘You’ve been doing [epidural] shots for 10 years, and it’s not working, so it’s time to try something different,’” Michael says.
Finally Pain-Free
On April 22, 2024, Dr. Jandhyala and colleague Issam Koleilat, MD, MPH, a vascular surgeon at CMC and a member of RWJBarnabas Health Medical Group, performed Michael’s lumbar fusion surgery at CMC. “When he woke up, his left leg pain was completely gone,” Dr. Jandhyala says.
Michael spent four days at CMC, where he began physical and occupational therapy. “The nurses and staff were so attentive, and my night nurse, Nicole, took good care of me,” he says.
Today, Michael is living pain-free for the first time in a decade. He walks around his neighborhood with his wife, takes the family to the boardwalk, works in his shop and mows the lawn in warmer months alongside Max, now 15.
“In the military, they train you to push through no matter how hard it looks, and this was harder than anything I’ve ever gone through,” Michael says. “Now I can bend over and tie my shoes without any pain. If I had known I’d feel this good, I would’ve had this surgery five years ago.”
Complex Back Surgery Through the Front
Many surgeons perform spine procedures only through the back. But Dr. Jandhyala often takes a different approach, accessing the spine through a small, 3-inch incision in the abdomen, just below the navel.
Dr. Jandhyala partnered with Dr. Koleilat, in a team procedure. Dr. Koleilat used instruments called retractors to carefully move important arteries, veins and organs out of the way. “This protects vital tissues and gives Dr. Jandhyala more visibility to do his work,” Dr. Koleilat says. Dr. Jandhyala then replaced a damaged disk between two of Michael’s vertebrae.
“Accessing the spine through the abdomen allows me to put a larger spacer between the vertebrae, which gives patients like Michael more strength and stability in the back,” Dr. Jandhyala says.
“We have complementary skill sets that together create a synergy that’s greater than the sum of our parts,” Dr. Koleilat adds.
Such teamwork among orthopedic surgeons, vascular surgeons and expert orthopedic nurses highlights the advantages of receiving care at RWJBarnabas Health and its network of hospitals such as Community Medical Center. “Everything you can get at a large academic medical center in New York or Philadelphia you can get locally here in Toms River,” Dr. Jandhyala says.
Learn more about spine surgery at RWJBarnabas Health or request an appointment with for spine treatment today.
View full issues of Healthy Together magazine by New Jersey region:
Northeast, serving the community of Jersey City Medical Center in Jersey City
Northwest, serving the communities of Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville, Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in Rahway, and Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Elizabeth
Central, serving the communities of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in Hamilton, New Brunswick and Somerset
South, serving the communities of Community Medical Center in Toms River, Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, and Monmouth Medical Center Southern Campus in Lakewood