Getting back on my feet

I'm back! Ouch. Sorta.

Surgery went as planned, on November 24th. I didn't get really nervous until about 10 minutes before, while talking to the anesthesiologist. He looked at me and said, "Are you anxious?" I admitted it. He gave me something wonderful to chill me out, through my IV.

Here's how the thing is supposed to go. The doctor makes a small incision on one side, to get at my spine from the side. He takes a long, thin instrument and carves out the middle of what's left of my disc. He inserts a little mesh bag filled with bone material in it, coated with a substance that encourages bone growth, so that it all fuses together. He then makes a small incision over my spine and inserts screws in the facet joints, to keep that level of my spine from moving.

The only hitch was that my disc degeneration was worse than expected. Initially, the doctor could not get the instrument into the space between my vertebrae. It was too narrow, being bone-on-bone in some places. He maneuvered enough to get in there, though, and the surgery went well after that.

I'm just getting to the point of being able to use my laptop. Apparently, it's a day my boss has been waiting for. A couple of days after my surgery, my pal Cathy was in a meeting with him, when a question that I'd usually answer came up.

"Can we just prop Blogget up and ask her this one?" she joked.

"I'm just about ready to do that," he said. He's been the one fielding the questions that usually go to me.

I'm not telling him I can use the computer just yet.