Oh please.  You're a hottie, and you know it.   He's doing really quite well...I got a diamond eternity ring for my pain and suffereing, so it can't be all bad!

Dude, it's not a biggie, you were on vacation - a much needed vacation, btw....and yeah, i know you got my back.  (hahahahah - ouch!)

Thanks, Elie.  He is, and I will.

That's what I said!

He's doing wonderfully.  Really, really well.  He even got up at 0500 to sit me on the toilet and fetch me a percocet.  If that aint love....well, I don't know what is!

It's not as gory as I had thought either, but it's still a lot bigger than I had imagined.  However...it'll tattoo up nice!

No sit ups, but I can have sex!  My doctors instruction sheet said so!  I wonder if anyone gets turned on by bloody scabs and steri strips?

Been away for a while.  Glad you got through the surgery and are home.  Sorry to hear you had one of those nasty nurses that always stick in your memory even if everyone else was great.

Best wishes!

I'm sore today.  I stood for 15 mins yesterday talking to my neighbor, and it was too much.  Today I'm paying for it....however, apart from that, I'm good!  I have somehting for you, btw...drop me an email, please?

I know!  I will never forget that beeatch!  Happy Birthday, btw!

OOh, that's right...I had forgotten about that...

I think that's a fantastic idea, Trudy.  You should start a thread about it....

I can assume by that description that you had surgery via laparoscopy.  Lap. guided surgery usually doesn't leave much of a scar because they inflate your skin away from your organs, unlike regular abdominal surgery where they use torture tools to pull your skin out of the way.

Karen, I have a line fairly similar to that, but mine goes from hip to hip.  They stapled me (first time I ever had them) and it scarred really bad even though they also used some steri strips.  So, it was probably a good move that they didn't use the staples. 

So, how is your back feeling?  Did they give you enough drugs to forget the pain?

The pain that I had before the surgery was gone the day after the surgery.  All that sciatic pain...all gone.  I'm finally realizing how much pain I was in daily....now that it's gone I see that I did the right thing getting the fusion done.  I'm also finding that things I attributed to getting older, having had babies etc etc....some of those things have gone away too. 

I'm on percocet, and my back today is....fragile.  I like wearing the brace, it makes my back feel stable.  I twisted a little in bed last night, and I could feel the instrumentation grinding against the bone.  Not nice....THAT hurt.  I'm taking things slowly, spending most of the day on my back on the couch, but I'm walking to the end of the street and back twice a day, pottering around the house with my cane, sitting at the computer for short periods of time...I'm building up my activity level.  Tomorrow I start doing plies (if you know ballet you'll know what those are) and knee bends.  D's going to wrap my yoga belt around my middle so he can support me if necessary, and I'm going to hang on to the back of the couch and do a few squats (doctors orders).  Next week we're going to start walking stairs (doctors orders too)...we have an exercise plan all worked out.

Yeah, they use these big spoon looking things called retractors and they have people literally leaning back on then to haul your skin and muscle apart.  That's what the bruises you see on my belly are from....and it's going to get more colorful over the next week or two!