OK, now that my head is a little clearer I can pass along how I'm doing. First off, Dr. Bierstedt said surgery went well and that the disc is situated perfectly. One good thing about being so thin is he didn't have far to go through my abdomen before hitting my spine. It took about 90 minutes from beginning to end. He also said he made a smaller incision than normal, so I'll be ready for bikini season in no time!
Pain in my stomach is strong enough that the pain meds aren't helping much. But I've never really reacted to painkillers, so I expected that. I was told most people experience a fair amount of stomach pain for the first 2-3 days, so it's nothing I need to worry about. My back is burning a little, mainly in my sacrum, but Dr. Bierstedt explained that the SI joints get a little angry form the surgery, so that's normal as well.
It's 3am here, and later this morning I'll get up and try to walk for the first time. I'm getting pretty fidgety, so I'm anxious to start moving around. I've never been good at being patient through injury rehab, but this is one time I plan to take it very slow and do as instructed.
I still can't believe I've got a prosthetic disc in my spine. The surreal aspect of this entire trip still hasn't worn off yet. It took what seemed like forever to get here, and now that it's happened it feels like it blew by. To say that I was scared as they wheeled me into surgery is the understatement of the year. Rarely do I get rattled about anything, but part of me wanted to jump out of the bed and run like the Santa Ana winds on warm autumn evening. But I took a deep breath, sucked down the happy gas, and came out the other side feeling relieved.
The good doctor is confident that my quality of life is going to improve significantly once I'm healed up, so I'm pretty excited to start rehab and put this behind me.
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