[trkdoc714]

Although I've been back since Thursday night, I'm finally getting my clock close to normal.

Surgery went well. The morphine epidural was taken off one or two days after surgery. The left the epidural line in place in case I needed it. I was on minor pain meds (Targin 10/5 X2 daily) for the duration of my stay. I walked about a mile a day 3 days out until I went to the hotel, then bumped it up to 2 miles a day (slow, easy strolls). I had mild pain but a huge decrease from the pre-op pain. I walked to a nearby train station each day for lunch and dinner (one trip, the mini-bar had enough room to keep dinner cold until it was time to eat).

I had a huge setback on the journey home. The flight was overbooked so business class wasn't an option. There were 2 high school field trip groups, several children (2 infants that wouldn't sleep) and a seatmate that coughed the entire 10 hour flight home. I wasn't able to get up and move around much since there was an over-abundance of clumsy people on board.

Lufthansa forgot the wheelchair assistance at Bremen and Frankfurt so I had to take stairways to the bus and back to the terminal as well as walking to the various gates. I found a push cart at Frankfurt for the baggage so I was able to walk around some during the layover.

Once I got to Atlanta, a TSA employee told me to "tough it out" and refused to let me use a cart to roll my bags. So I got to move them through customs on my own. There was a lady that had her son help with them through one of the lines, that was a help. While trying to wait for an opportune time to pull one of my bags (the one with wheels) off of the carousel, a woman rushed over to see if it was hers and nearly knocked me to the ground. By the time I got to the curb where my ride was supposed to be, I was already getting high grade back spasms. I've pretty much been trying to get ahead of the pain and getting my clock back on schedule ever since.

The post surgical Xrays show good placement of both discs. L4/5 is a little further forward than ideal, but the top surface of L5 angles up at the rear. The surgeon was afraid to try to get it in further as he was concerned that part of the bone would fracture (causing additional problems). He was able to position the disc so it still has a posterior placement to reduce the stresses on the facet joints.

The best news is that aside from the travel, the trip was a success. I'm going to the walk in clinic later this week to get an Xray done to make sure the return trip didn't cause any problems other than muscular pulls/ strain.

Bob