The BIG Day

My actual back

November 13th, a Tuesday – NOT a Friday, thenkyewveddymuch, is the day my back's gonna be sliced open. We’re not talking a Marianas Trench length incision like I had 16 odd years ago, back when I came very close to losing my pins and ALL feeling/sensation from the tits down.

The AWESOME Doc Coumans

As it turns out, I've a whole wide collection of meningiomas lining my spine now. Makes sense — my motto always has been why do when you can overdo. The awesome Doc Coumans is going to focus on evicting the larger ones farther up on my thoracic. They’re the ones responsible for my extreme tippiness, spazoidal falls and leg/lower back pain. The fat bastids are crowding my poor spinal cord somethin' fierce.

He'll snatch the smaller, southern ones another year. Why not do them all at once? They're not next door nabes to the big patch. Grabbing them would involve Marianas length carving, which would make for more risky surgery and more brutish recovery. We're gonna avoid that shit. Capisci?

The lovely Doc Coumans tells me this’ll be a four hour surgery, to which I responded OH, a quickie! He found that reaction…emm…wryly interesting. I said Dude, I’m used to 10, 12, 16 hours on the table. You even gonna knock me out for this one?

Yes, yes they will. Probably just to shut me up while they work.

Now then, this IS some scary shit BUT I’ve been here, done this before. I’m confident in Coumans abilities (particularly since my pal Michie, a fellow Nf2 traveler, gave him a big thumbs up). Plus I can and will channel my nervosa into cleaning, prepping, painting and other ready or not, here I come shit.

Do NOT hold the cat like this!

Hold cat like this
but support the feets

I’m molto sad that The Amazing Bob’s not here to help me through this (amongst other things). We were a real, rock ‘em, sock ‘em comedy team at times like this and we had SO many of 'em. Still I gots a great crew. Hillel will take me in on surgery morning and be with me, undoubtedly joining me in irreverent, puerile, What, me worry? humor. Jen will be there when I rise out of my heavy duty anesthesia coma-time. After the last back surgery, first thing I said when I swam up out of the mist Did you remember to tape Buffy!? Yeah, priorities – got to have 'em in line!

Another beloved bud will tote my ass home and stay the first night with me, making sure I don’t splat down the stairs on a midnight run to the can. Other folks will bunk in during the rest of that first week AND Jen’s got my first at-home convalescence week off from her big job in the pixel mines. I’m all set. She says with shaky brio.

Recovery World will last for six to eight weeks.What can and what shouldn't I do whilst recoverating?

I asked, can I pick up/hold my precious and clingy kitten? Yes, he sez but do not hold her away from your body, hold her close. Well, DUH-HUH! How else do you carry/hug/cosset and love a cat? I’m sure I’ll have a zillion other questions but that was the only one that came to me while in the good doc’s presence yesterday. This, THIS is how awesome he is – he gave me his email address so I could send him any and all other questions I have. TOO cool – I have a deaf friendly surgeon. I likey this a LOT!

nice view from his office too