Recuperating

The surgery yesterday went very well. Waking up from the anesthesia was very difficult, of course, but almost from the first step I took afterwards, I noticed a significant improvement in both pain and mobility. I’m sore today, as can be expected, but overall I feel much improved and am enjoying the fact that I both walk and sit normally again. I have been forbidden from lifting anything that’s heavier than 10 pounds or from driving or traveling anywhere for at least the next two weeks. I’m living on Vicoden right now, of course, to help with the pain from surgery and probably will be on it for several days while I heal up. I go back to see my surgeon again in about a month for a follow-up and to talk about physical therapy. He wants me to pick up some form of exercise at that point, like Pilates or Yoga, to help strengthen my core muscles and improve flexibility. This is especially critical since I have this Degenerative Disk Disease. I really don’t want to have to go through this process again if it can be at all avoided.

So that’s the general update from me at this point. I’m resting and taking short walks periodically to start trying to recover some muscle that’s been lost in the last month in bed. I’ll be looking to get back to the office to work partial days in three to four weeks and work my way back up to full days again.

Surgery

Well, the grand update is that I go in for surgery tomorrow on my back. I report to Ambulatory Surgery at 7:30AM and go into the OR at 9. If all goes well, I’ll be home around midday or early afternoon. Hopefully, when I wake up, I’ll be much more comfortable.

Can’t wait to have this procedure behind me.

Trolling

Some folks on the web seem to enjoy toeing the line of trollishness. There’s one fellow in particular that I first met through my writing job at WLTC whose manner in addressing perceived issues toes just such a line. Personally, I think the guy’s a jerk. He may be a good designer, but that, to me, doesn’t really excuse the manner in which he approaches things. For starters, he likes to give ‘advice’ on how to design and build layouts for WordPress sites. But the way in which he does this is very confrontational and caustic. Basically, in his mind, it’s his way or the highway, the rest of the world be damned. Then, he seems to enjoy finding offense in everything. Apparently, he thinks everyone is out to get him, and so he likes to inflate every issue to personal attack status, when folks are, in reality, just trying to address his concerns in a rational manner.

I’ve bumped into this guy on a couple of other websites now, most having to do with WordPress site design, and I’m getting to the point where I wish this guy would just fall off the face of the planet. I’m a bit tired now of dealing with his arrogance and condescension, even though none of it, as yet, has been directed at me. It just gets very wearisome dealing with people like that after awhile.

Neurosurgery

I had a doctor’s visit yesterday, originally as a follow-up to some of the other medications I’m on right now to help with my sleep disorder and my (slightly) underactive thyroid. So, of course, we ended up talking mostly about my back. The doc wrote me a work excuse for the last two weeks as well as for all of next week, so I’m good to go on that front. He also approved me to be able to work from home, provided my office can set me up with remote access to the servers at Purdue.

Probably the best news from the appointment, though, is that he changed my medical referral from the pain management group to a neurosurgeon. He took a closer look at my MRI results and decided that, given the level of the herniation in the disk, it’s unlikely that therapy, exercise, medication, and steroid injections will provide any lasting relief or even necessarily bring me back to a functional level of mobility. Apparently, it’s a pretty sizeable herniation, and he thinks that seeing a surgeon will probably serve me better at this point. What’s even better is that we weren’t home from the doctor’s office for more than maybe 10 or 20 minutes and the surgeon’s office was already calling to set up an appointment – for Monday. So, they’re right on the ball over there, and I’m hopeful about being able to find a good and lasting solution to my recent back problems.

I fully expect to be scheduled for surgery sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’m not exactly excited by that prospect – I’ve already had one surgery in my life, and the recovery time wasn’t exactly fun. I’m also under no illusions that surgery will eliminate all of my back problems. In my experience, there are rarely any kind of miracle cures for back issues. But by the same token, I’m also optimistic that surgery will alleviate all this uncomfortable pressure on my sciatic nerve and reduce the pain and give me feeling back to my toes. So, here’s hoping something better comes out of this than what the pain management folks would have been able to provide.

Immobile

It’s been 2.5 weeks now, and I’m still flat on my back. It’s weird having one’s toes be all tingly and half-numb all the time, with pain radiating all the way from one’s lower back down into one’s foot. At least I’m more mobile now than I was two weeks ago. The Vicoden at night helps me sleep.

My first appointment with the pain management folks is still a week away. At this point I’ll be surprised if they end up being able to work me in any sooner than that. In the meantime I continue to lie here at home watching movies and playing games on my Xbox 360. Hopefully, the PM people will be able to do something to help. It sure would be nice to be back up and running again.

Facebook

I just found out a little while ago that Facebook now supports WordPress.com blogs. That, for me, was the selling point to finally setting up a profile page there. The funny thing is, I’d set up this wp.com site two years ago primarily because I needed the API key for the Akismet plugin on Shamus Writes. Now, though, I think I’ll be using this blog primarily for personal updates. So, feel free to read and comment as you see fit. I’m going to try to have some fun with this and use Facebook to network a little better with some people I’ve lost touch with over the last few years.