Jamie, welcome to the forum!
I look forward to hearing about your successful surgery. I'm 6+ years post-op from a 2-level Charite. My wife is 7 months post-op from her 2-level ProDisc.
You can read about my wife's experience here:
http://www.ispine.org/forum/surgery-...gery-blog.html
You might want to create your own surgery blog for the benefit of others who'll follow you.
My early experience is on a website that is very dated...
Life After Surgery
By the way, yesterday, I spoke to Gary... the other guy in the tennis picture who was wondering why Maureen and I were playing tennis while he as still moving so slowly 6 years ago. He is now in a bowling league and is 100% with his lumbar spine and has been for many years. His recovery was much slower than mine, but his his recovery has been just as wonderful.
The photo below was from May of this year. Diane and I were in Miami for the Spine Arthroplasty Society's annual meeting. We got to spend some time with Dr. Garcia and his wife. Next to Diane is John Viscogliosi of Viscogliosi Brothers. They are responsible for rescuing ProDisc from a store room at Aesculap.
Note the time on the clock tower in the distance. We were at the conference at 8am that day. Not bad for 5 weeks post-op for Diane.
Dr. Garcia has some interesting experience. He's made a hobby of studying ADR history and has some amazing stories to tell. Next time you see him, ask him if the rumors that JFK had fernstrom balls implanted in his spine are true. (They were the first real attempt at ADR. I'll put a picture below.)
Yes, these are really just big ball bearings that were popped into the disc space.
One more bit of encouragement... go to the GPN website linked in my signature below and see the tennis video. 24 years post-op!
All the best.
Mark
PS... please keep us posted!