going under the knife - 17 April (mark your calendar)

the fat kid (me) scheduled surgery on his lower back (17 April! mark your calendar!). oh, pardon me, "low back". when you talk about these things all the time you leave out the "-er". very official sounding.
just in case you thought a "right L4-5 microdiskectomy" was a routine procedure, allow me to reproduce part of my surgical consent form. It lists no fewer than 18 potential risks and complications related to this outpatient procedure. Some highlights (numbers correspond to where they appear in the actual list on the form):

2) recurrent herniation [not so bad, all things considered.]

5) nerve root injury resulting in temporary or permanent loss of function, causing pain, numbness, and/or weakness [now you have my attention]

6) paralysis resulting in loss of all lower extremity function as well as loss of bowel and/or bladder function, and/or sexual function [item 6 is worse than item 18]

7) persistent or increased pain

10) disc degeneration resulting in chronic back pain which may require spinal fusion

11) instability, causing excessive motion in spine, resulting in pain that may require spinal fusion

14) pneumonia [from the anesthetic]

16) pulmonary embolus [this would cause paralysis or brain damage, or #18]

17) stroke

18) death [yikes!]

on the upside, the doc says that none of these things is likely. I was thinking about it, and I realized it's easy to fret about the probability that bad things might happen. you could get hit by a car on your way to work, fall down some stairs, get dumped on valentine's day, whatever. does no good to worry about it.
the best news about the whole deal: I might get better.

surgery details:

• operation lasts about 90 minutes.
• I go home the same day. take a week off of work, spend time playing xbox, reading, practicing guitar, watching movies.
  
• pt starts 4-7 days after surgery
• after 8 weeks they expect I'll be 90% healed. just can't run.