The surgery was exciting, Emily had a test right before it, but was able to make it into the hospital to see me off. I was given the anesthesia and WOW that felt like being suddenly forced beneath a thousand pounds of warm water! The room got really loud and then I was out.
The next thing I recall was waking up and everything was very dark and somewhere far away I heard my doctor saying the surgery was a success. With all of my strength I lifted my hand to shake his. The next few hours were definitely the worst. Emily was told my recovery time would be about 1 and a half hours. Lets just say it was 4 hours. My body decided to have a lot of reaction to being sliced open and drugged. After all of that we took about 15 minutes to get out the the car (in a wheel chair) and started the drive home.
We stopped at Albertsons to fill a perscription and Emily slowly fed me crackers and water. I couldn't eat more than 1/2 of a saltine at a time, and she had to pour water in my mouth as I didn't have any saliva of my own yet. She was so nice to me. I should mention that the entire hospital staff were all very sweet also. They were glad Em was a nurse so they didn't have to go into tons of details upon my release.
Long story short - I took lots of drugs and healed for the next 4 days. Now I'm able to walk around and even bend a little without too much pain. Emily has been an amazing support - doing everything for me. She deserves all the credit.
I attached a couple images of the procedure. After which are one of me having a really hard time :) and one of my back. (they wrote yes on it to make sure they did the correct side!)
