Surgery

So my back surgery will be some time tomorrow (Tuesday, October 29). The time of day hasn’t been set as of this writing, but it’s bound to be in the morning early.

The doctor says I’ll be in the hospital for three days. And then recovery will take weeks. And I expect to be entirely out of commission the first week.

There will be gaps in the posting. I’ll not be able to maintain this pace for the next little bit. (Posts written before hand will continue for a while. I might even post some reruns for fun.)

The surgery will be a redo of my earlier L5-S1 fusion, with additional screws in the L4 vertebra to provide greater stability. I’ll also have a device attached to stimulate bone growth.

I’m not sure how that works, really. It may whisper encouraging words to my bone graft or shoot me full of cosmic rays. But since the last fusion didn’t take, I’m okay with anything at all that might make it fuse this time.

In addition to a failed fusion, I’ve had something called piriformis syndrome. “Piriformis” refers to a hip muscle that the sciatic nerve runs through. It tends to spasm and that leads to pinching the nerve, which really hurts, and which leads to spasms …

“Syndrome” means we can diagnose it but we don’t exactly know what causes it — and we’re not real sure about how to fix it. But the theory is that the surgery will fix the underlying cause. We’ll find out shortly.

I’m deeply appreciative of the many prayers being lifted up on my behalf. And I’ve received some notes from people I’ve never met but obviously care about me — and I’ve been deeply touched by these notes. In fact, there are days I know I only manage to get through it because of the prayers of other people — righteous people.

Thank you.

Not sure when I’ll be back posting. It could be a week or more. So if I don’t say anything for a while, don’t assume I died on the operating table or whatever. Even if things go perfectly, I’ll be pretty useless to the world for at least a week — maybe more.

So please keep  on praying for me. It matters more than I can express.