A week or two later.

It's been a while since my surgery and I'm pretty much recovered from that trauma. I do have two new scars decorating my back now. The scars are not quite as ugly as they were. When I see how far he had to cut down my spine to release the cable I want to say 'ouch'.

With the surgery out of the way I am back to the same old pain that I had before the surgery. That was expected. I will meet with my surgeon next week and he will order an MRI for me and then discuss the plans for going forward to obtain the pain relief. And with the same pain I end up with the pain relief problems that I had. More Norco and more Dilaudid. The pain comes and goes as usual. Yesterday was a zero Norco day while the day before I needed 4 of them plus 2 Dilaudid. Today it's 2 Norco and it's not quite noon.

I'm really interested in what my surgeon will recommend for pain relief once the diagnosis of ASD is confirmed. (ASD is Adjacent Segment Disease or Deterioration) Googling ASD gives me a lot of information.

Here's one that will give me a lot more metal to deal with; though I do admire the high tech look of it.

 This is all too familiar...been there, done that.














This one looks like the simplest. But I have to wonder about the life of the springs?













I hope these images don't bother anyone. I'm very much used to seeing things like this. Back in the day, when I was a Navy Hospital Corpsman, I worked for Cmdr Rolf Noer, a Navy neurosurgeon as well as an orthopedic surgeon. Back in those days a surgeon could have both boards. Anyway, we were all quite familiar with the contents of his black bag; saws, chisels, files, screws, nails and etc. His tools would fit right in to a carpenters tool box.