The First Day Of The Rest Of My Life

As I type this in my zero-gravity recliner from my living room, I'm happy to report I'm not in the horrible, excruciating pain I feared I might be.

Surgery was yesterday at the crack of dawn. I was, understandably, pretty nervous. Say what you will about Stanford, they really have their stuff together at the Ambulatory Surgery Center. My surgeons wisely gave my wife my prescriptions before surgery, and there is a Walgreens in the building. I had Vicodin waiting for me when I woke up.

I didn't speak to the surgeon, but my wife did. It turns out the disk extrusion had calcified, it had been there so long. Ewww. And it turns out I may be in a for a lifetime of back problems due to my genealogical bone structure. Just peachy. At least I know it's not entirely my fault. I'll know more in six weeks at my follow-up.

I slept a lot of yesterday off. My back feels like someone ripped it open and jabbed a bunch of instruments in there, probably because that's what happened. On the other hand, I was not expecting so much pain in my throat and sinuses. While I was out, they stuck a breathing tube down my throat. The result is a raspy voice, pain while swallowing, and coughing up blood.

All in all, not doing too bad. The sciatic nerve is irritated, but that's to be expected. It feels like I already have some strength back in my right foot, which is really encouraging considering it hasn't been very long, and the chances for recovery were not that high. Icing my back for twenty minutes regularly, as that should reduce inflammation as well as force blood to rush into the area to repair the damage.

Standing feels best. I stupidly laid on my back on a foam wedge at first, before realizing it was a lot less painful to lay face down while putting on the ice. Lying in bed on my left side results in virtually no pain, but it's pretty boring unless I'm sleeping. The couch is too soft to lie on. The zero-grav chair I bought is fine as long as I stay in one place, and since I can use the laptop and watch HDTV from there, that's where I've set up camp.

This morning, I made a bowl of cereal, made coffee, and even ventured outside to get the paper (with my grabber, no bending over). So I already feel like I'm making some progress. Things could be better, but they certainly could be a lot worse.