Back Surgery on Monday

I will finally be having my back surgery Monday the 8th of Feb. Been out of work since Sep. 12th 08, yup, that’s almost 17 months!!! They are going to fuse my tail bone to L5, and L5 to L4, using bone grafts between them, and titanium rods on each side for support. Of course I have been put through the wringer with the workers comp insurance company, first was PT for months with no relief, then on to pain management consisting of steroid injections in three spots down each side of my back, still not much help. Then came radio frequency treatments, also thee spots on each side, of which they hit a blood vessel instead of the nerve on the last round of that. When the blood vessel popped, it was so loud you could hear it, and I could really feel that one! My leg jerked and almost knocked out the nurse that was assisting the Doctor!

After all that crap, they finally did a discography, where they inject a dye into the disk to see if it will hold pressure and push on the nerves that are causing the pain. Well that showed two tears that did not show up on the MRI, and of course, was a really fun procedure. If the damn insurance companies would authorize discographies in the beginning, it would take a lot of the guess work out of it, and saved me at least a year of jumping through hoops to prove how much pain I had. My doctor is one of the best back surgeons in NY, and getting on his schedule takes some time too.

So here I am 17 months later, going into surgery with at least a year of rehabilitation, and then I will never be able to work at my old job again. Luckily I can go into the networking department at my old company, and do site surveys and network installs of copiers/printers/fax systems, (I was a copier repairman before). I did a lot of that before, because I worked in the outlying areas, and it saved the networking department a lot of road time. I am mostly self taught in the computer end of it, but now while I am out for another year I can get some certifications.

I was fortunate that of the two places that I am comfortable, my recliner, and on my VN2000 Kawie, I was able to put over 9K on the bike this past summer on my trip to Las Vegas to help get my son back on track. With the custom seat and backrest, and my feet on the floorboards or cruise pegs, I was pretty comfortable at 3000 RPM. The vibes of that big 125 cubic inch V Twin, in conjunction with the seating position made for a nice massaging feeling on my lower back, and kept the blood flowing nicely!

Wish me luck guys and gals, I will have wifi at the hospital so I should be back here by Tuesday to let you all know how good the nurses and drugs are! LOL


:zzz::cheers::hehe::wacko::tup: