So this is what they are going to stick into my back. As far as I can tell its a piece of PVC pipe with a big gnarly stainless screw in it. There will actually be 2 more screws too. One going up and two going down. Just like toe-nailing a rib on a ramp or something. This little do-hickey will take the place of the disc they are taking out and lock the to adjacent vertabrae in place. 6 more days till surgery day so not much going on with me. Finally got the mountain bike that Giant sent me rolling so I can ride that for a bit since its nice and squishy with full suspension. However, after surgery the docs tell me I’m not supposed to lift anything over 10 pounds for three whole months!!! I’m sure there is a great joke here I’m missing. I was thinking, maybe if I use all the lightest parts with lots of holes drilled in them I could maybe get a bike together that is light enough for me to ride without breaking doctors orders??

I guess in whatever is going with Ride’s blog reformating I lost a few of the most recent posts, so here they are again. I’m so sick of writing about this fusion surgery stuff, but I figure maybe someone somewhere will go through the same thing someday and perhaps find some of this a helpful reference.

From June 18 2009

Jamie Bestwick was kind enough to set me up to talk to his doctor about spine surgeries. Dr Gregory Bailey did the fusion surgery that Jamie had done a little while ago and had him riding again in 5 weeks. Dr Bailey confirmed that based on my symptoms and MRI surgery did seem to be the right path. He also made me feel pretty confident about my surgeons. Definitely nice to get a good second opinion. He also restated that a six month recovery time is to be expected with the type of surgery I’ll get. Dr Bailey is cool, if you need back help in PA I would highly recommend going to see him.

I’m sick of talking about backs and ready to get this done. And sick of being a zombie on pain meds.

From June 15 2009

Not really too much to report about the back right now except that I met with the Cardio-Vascular surgeon and got a date for surgery. July 9th they slice me up. He described in detail how they will make an incision from my belly button straight down about 4 inches. Then he pushes all the intestines and stuff out of the way making a hole visible all the way to my spine. The really dangerous part is that he then must move my aorta blood vessel out of the way by gently flexing it to one side. While he was telling me it really started to make me a little bit queazy. Usually that stuff doesn’t bother me, but for some reason it felt like I could feel what he was doing inside of me. It reminded me of the time I was telling my friend Jared the details of my splenectomy. I was explaining how they chop you open and then empty all of your intestines out of your body into a bowl so they can wash the blood off them and stop the bleeding of the exploded spleen. He suddenly went green and puked! It was only later that he told me it was because everything was especially realistic to him since he had been drinking magic mushroom beer.