DALLAS -- Treatment for degenerative disk pain usually means spinal fusion surgery and lingering pain long after surgery, but a new option for back patients can reduce pain and recovery time.

Patients like Mary Sue Schick can spend most of their time in bed due to a degenerative disk and a slipping in their spines.

"You can't walk, you can't move, you can't stay healthy," Schick said.

After trying all the traditional therapies and medications with no success, Schick had back surgery at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.

However, instead of using bone taken from her hip to complete a spinal fusion, which is the typical approach to the surgery, Dr. John Peloza used a new FDA-approved genetically engineered protein.

"Instead of harvesting bone off the patient's pelvis, we just put this material in and it will create bone," Peloza said.

Peloza and his team saturated collagen sponges with a special protein that actually reacts in the body in such a way that it creates bone.

The team placed the sponges inside a small titanium cage and implanted it between Schick's vertebrae to complete the fusion surgery.

"The pain relief is very significant as well as the improvement in their function because they're not hurting," Peloza said.

That's because, according to Peloza, several studies have shown that patients usually experience more pain from the hip surgery than they do from the actual fusion procedure itself.

And it's that pain that usually makes recovery much more difficult.

But there was no lingering pain for Schick. "I'm surprised I can do what I can do," she said.

Three weeks after surgery, Schick was out of bed, exercising and experiencing far less pain in her back.

"They have told me this is a 10- to 12-month real healing process," she said.

However, if doctors had harvested bone from her hip to complete her fusion surgery, studies show her recovery could take twice as long.