Laminectomies and me

I received the Pre-Op Medical clearance paperwork in the mail yesterday from the Arlington Group (no connection to Arlington, VA) and for the first time got to see exactly what my surgery was going to entail: bilateral laminectomies.  Sounds fun, doesn't it?  I went online to see educate myself, as usual, and realized this was going to be a little more extensive then I'd originally thought.  Ah well, that's life.  It's either have it done or slowly lose the use of first my right leg, and then the left, to arthritis.  If possible, I'd like to save the wheelchair days until I'm in my 80' or 90's.

I also looked at a couple of forums to see what people were actually saying about the procedure and there really weren't that many comments.  And of those few that had been posted about 2/3 were negative.  What surprised me was not that there were negative comments, but that there were so few - one of the forums only had 16 comments since 2012.  That's not a lot.  In fact that's an incredibly small number when you consider the procedures have been performed about 1.5 million times since then.

Anyway, all I'm doing is waiting.  Oh, and playing video games.

To fuse or not to fuse, tis not really the question

Looks like I'm going to have a Laminechtomy on May 6.  I can't wait.  Of course, I had to do a little research to find out just what Laminae are, I mean let's be honest, the term does sound slightly vulgar doesn't it?  And it doesn't exactly sound gender neutral, either.  I mean, how many guys have you heard saying "damn, I'm having a problem with my lamina?"  Hearing some guy say that, and working in the Home Improvement field, I'd immediately think he was having trouble installing a counter-top.  Of course I'd be wrong, lamina has nothing to do with Formica, or any similar product.  We do, however, all have them.

That's right, they're in our spine.

They're also going to fuse some of my vertebrae together, and, of course, I needed to do some research.  What I found out was surprising.  In 2011 over 488,000 people in the United States had their spines fused.  That's more then 1300 a day.  They accounted for over 3.1% of all hospital visits.  Isn't that amazing!  If you had asked me a month ago how many people underwent this procedure yearly, I'd have estimated about 2000.  Education, isn't it wonderful.