Wow! Just having joined the forum yesterday, ordered from you today, and now I find you're going in for back surgery! Busy forum.
For what it may be worth, my wife had a spinal fusion a long time ago when she was 15. Not sure what the L numbers were, but it was in the small of her back, three of them were fused. She's - well, I'll just say it was a few years ago (..............) and today I watched her outside lugging 80 pound sacks of lime around and digging in her gardens. So something must have worked, as when she finally had the fusion, she had been unable to get out of her bed for three days. In addition to that, her doctor now had said something along the lines that the techniques for spinal fusion are SO much better now than they were back then that it's a wonder anyone actually got better back then.
So if Deb can do that well with the old techniques, I expect you'll be doing extremely well once the swelling goes down and the healing completes.
And I wish you the best of luck - I truly hope you have the best possible experience.
WHo knows - maybe you'll have a conversation with a doctor about lasers that will get him thinking, and you'll wind up being a catalyst for a whole new laser-surgical procedure that will save people pain in the future! You never know... Life's funny.
And do yourself a favor - if you've gone this long without smoking - keep going! You're already past the hardest point - it gets easier every day after this!
Best of luck,
Dave X
